Pursuit Think Post One

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In the two years since the 2016 EU Referendum results sent shockwaves through the geopolitical landscape of the Western Hemisphere, the notion of British identity has been challenged. Often seen as a more inclusive successor to the English, Scottish, and Welsh nationalities encompassed within the term, the boundaries of British inclusivity, and even British unity, are under revision by citizens and casual observers alike. The 2018 Windrush scandal further exacerbated fears that Britain, like many countries in the West, was in retrograde, reversing decades of perceived racial progress in favour of a more “nationalist” identity.

            Ironically, the nation that is Britain isn’t truly a nation at all, in the traditional sense of the word. Great Britain’s component countries – England, Scotland, and Wales – each have distinct histories, though often overlapping and marked by conflict with each other. The British Empire, and it’s benignly-named successor, the British Overseas Territories, served as the physical, cultural, and financial outposts of Britain, extending the literal and figurative boundaries of Britishness to predominantly black and brown countries. Colonisation built a Britain within the minds of the colonised. In the wake of the Second World War and mass independence movements, Britain rebuilt a nation through the assistance of hundreds of thousands of immigrants from former colonies. And in keeping with globalisation, Britain built a brand of inclusivity, attracting millions of black and brown people to the promise of a progressive, colour-blind society.

            Millions of people of colour have emigrated to the United Kingdom since the initial waves of post-colonial immigration began in the mid-20th century. Deemed expatriates or immigrants depending on the context of the conversation, they often negotiate boundaries of Britishness that are predicated on their country of origin. As an African-American eventual expatriate, my initial ideas of Britishness were shaped by the Spice Girls, Austin Powers, and Princess Diana. The spectre of colonisation eluded me and my ancestry.

However, embracing British identity can be a decision fraught with conflicting emotions for people of colour from former British colonies. Often, it is neither British citizenship nor even physical residency that instils the foundational notion of Britishness in these instances. The post-colonial writer Jamaica Kincaid described the indoctrination she received as a child in Antigua: “England was to be our source of myth and the source from which we got our sense of reality, our sense of what was meaningful, our sense of what was meaningless-and much about our own lives”. Elaborating, she wrote: “My nose was pressed up against a glass window all right, but there was an iron vise at the back of my neck forcing my head to stay in place”.

For some descendants of former British colonial “subjects”, the new era of “wokeness” has encouraged critical dialogue about colonisation and British identity. Organisations such as the Decolonising Our Minds Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and movements such as “Why Is My Curriculum White?” have sough to dismantle the racist legacies of colonialism and promote a more inclusive Britain. However, for some black expatriates, it remains impossible to reconcile their expat status with British identity. Evelyn Gyasi, a Ghanaian-America lawyer, concedes that her family has Britishness tendencies, whether it’s through her father’s appreciation of the BBC, or her relatives that currently reside in the UK. She even admits that she has picked up a few traits from her adopted country, including an aversion to talking on the Tube. Despite these connections, she believes that there is a “self-imposed restriction to being British” that stands in direct contrast to her identity as a “distinctly American” Black woman. Citing her parents that emigrated to the US from Ghana, she says that she will be an American with British citizenship and the occasional British sentiment, in the way that her parents identify as “Ghanaian people with American citizenship”.

The perceived disconnect between British citizenship and Britishness is not uncommon. Ashley James, an American-born Chef residing in London, has had a British passport since she was a teen, but believes that feeling British is a result of experiences such as attending “school at a young age [in the UK]” or living in the UK “longer than you have in your home country”. The notion that Britishness is not conferred simply through citizenship, but rather through lived experiences, circles back to pervasiveness of Britishness and the --------