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Beyond Englishness - Australianess too?
Beyond Englishness
This question may also be important to Australia, a multicultural society in which it is perhaps difficult to define the Australianess - but, is it important to define it, or it is clear already? Does a migrant have the right to want to become integrated into the Australian society (without external pressures) and if the answer is yes, what is it?
Our national identity has always been taken for granted, but now it is being sidelined by new local bonds, says Madeleine Bunting
Monday March 14, 2005
The Guardian
Six hundred kids in schools in four English towns were asked about their identity in a Joseph Rowntree Foundation study to be published on Wednesday. Those from ethnic minorities didn't hesitate with their answers - black, Pakistani Muslim, Muslim, Asian - while the white majority were left stumbling. "I'm sort of tanned," said one. "I've aquamarine eyes," said another. Some of the white kids could describe their heritage - "I'm a quarter Scottish" or "I'm an eighth Japanese" - but they couldn't label the identity it gave them. Being "English" meant nothing to them. (...)
But there is a growing school which argues that questions of identity are critical, and the "doughnut" problem - the absence of a strong, meaningful sense of Englishness - is a real handicap. This is the starting point for David Blunkett's attempts, in a major speech today, to formulate a progressive definition of Englishness. He argues that the left's historic ambivalence about nationalism is in danger of leaving open a territory that can be captured by rightwing opinion, which can mould it to fit a narrowly defined, introverted, racialised agenda with dangerous consequences for communal harmony and foreign policy. Questions of identity are not just abstract concepts, but act as organising principles for a gamut of domestic and foreign policies, from levels of taxation to community cohesion and Europe.
(...)
to keep reading: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1436832,00.html
This question may also be important to Australia, a multicultural society in which it is perhaps difficult to define the Australianess - but, is it important to define it, or it is clear already? Does a migrant have the right to want to become integrated into the Australian society (without external pressures) and if the answer is yes, what is it?
Our national identity has always been taken for granted, but now it is being sidelined by new local bonds, says Madeleine Bunting
Monday March 14, 2005
The Guardian
Six hundred kids in schools in four English towns were asked about their identity in a Joseph Rowntree Foundation study to be published on Wednesday. Those from ethnic minorities didn't hesitate with their answers - black, Pakistani Muslim, Muslim, Asian - while the white majority were left stumbling. "I'm sort of tanned," said one. "I've aquamarine eyes," said another. Some of the white kids could describe their heritage - "I'm a quarter Scottish" or "I'm an eighth Japanese" - but they couldn't label the identity it gave them. Being "English" meant nothing to them. (...)
But there is a growing school which argues that questions of identity are critical, and the "doughnut" problem - the absence of a strong, meaningful sense of Englishness - is a real handicap. This is the starting point for David Blunkett's attempts, in a major speech today, to formulate a progressive definition of Englishness. He argues that the left's historic ambivalence about nationalism is in danger of leaving open a territory that can be captured by rightwing opinion, which can mould it to fit a narrowly defined, introverted, racialised agenda with dangerous consequences for communal harmony and foreign policy. Questions of identity are not just abstract concepts, but act as organising principles for a gamut of domestic and foreign policies, from levels of taxation to community cohesion and Europe.
(...)
to keep reading: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1436832,00.html
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