Thicker than water
May 1st 2010 10:09
I don’t usually pay too much attention to British politics – I’ve spent the last fifteen years wary of the very concept of a House of Lords – but there was an article in Time magazine about the third-party candidate Nick Clegg that caught my attention. Some of the British tabloids have apparently dismissed him as “only a quarter English,” given his parents’ Russian ancestry and his Spanish wife. Notably, this charge was raised by some of the same publications that once stamped their feet indignantly over ethnic chauvinism in Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe, and Malaysia.
I’d love to ask some questions of the people who think it’s a good idea to point this out. What is “English enough,” anyway? The Welsh consider themselves distinct – what about the English counties that border Wales? What about Anglo-Indians? What about Anglo-Indians whose families have been in England since the 19th century, like my former MBA classmate, a Melbourne-based expatriate named Carol Charles? The Vikings had a profound influence on English politics and culture in the early Middle Ages; does that earn modern Scandinavians preferential treatment?
These are the impossible questions that the framers of post-World War II global politics were desperate to avoid. It seems that there were still people willing to ask them, even knowing what has gone before. The end of that era will soon be upon us, but whether the evolution of nationalism follows the path of Republika Srpska or “only” that of the Daily Mail is an open question.
I’d love to ask some questions of the people who think it’s a good idea to point this out. What is “English enough,” anyway? The Welsh consider themselves distinct – what about the English counties that border Wales? What about Anglo-Indians? What about Anglo-Indians whose families have been in England since the 19th century, like my former MBA classmate, a Melbourne-based expatriate named Carol Charles? The Vikings had a profound influence on English politics and culture in the early Middle Ages; does that earn modern Scandinavians preferential treatment?
These are the impossible questions that the framers of post-World War II global politics were desperate to avoid. It seems that there were still people willing to ask them, even knowing what has gone before. The end of that era will soon be upon us, but whether the evolution of nationalism follows the path of Republika Srpska or “only” that of the Daily Mail is an open question.
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