Page 152 - White Lives The Interplay of 'Race', Class, and Gender in Everyday Life

How English am I? 145
Emma

Emma was unusual among the interviewees not only because she said that
she describes herself as English when asked for her nationality, but also be-
cause this was the result of a strong desire not to be ‘British’. The follow-
ing extract demonstrates the ways in which Englishness was associated for
Emma with pride. This was immediately followed by the supposed threats
posed by ‘aliens’ or foreigners, who she associated with crime and the unfair
burden they placed on English taxpayers. To imagine Englishness seemed
almost impossible for Emma without also summoning up the abject – those
excluded from the category, who at once threatened Englishness, yet also
were crucial to defining what it was. The cost of imprisoning a ‘foreign’
pickpocket could then be contrasted with that of producing the epitome of
upper-class Englishness, the Etonian schoolboy.

BB: So I’m trying to look at what is understood by being English or
being British. I mean, if you were asked to put your nationality
on forms, what do you put?
Emma: Um, English. Yes, it’s about being English rather than being
British I think. [. . .] But I’m actually very proud of being Eng-
lish. It’s interesting though, because you know this thing about
the gypsies. That’s been a point of conversation with lots of
7
people really. And, you know that thing of them coming into,
it feels like an invasion to some people, and it’s mostly to do
with money. They’re thinking, you know, all this money is being
spent when there’s not enough, you know they’re not giving
students enough money, they’re not giving the NHS enough
money. My purse was stolen from my workplace last week and
the woman who stole it was on police bail and she’s now in
Holloway. And for her to be in Holloway for a year is the same
as sending someone to Eton for a year. And she wasn’t English,
she was Portuguese. But I guess because of this new European
thing, you don’t just push her back to Portugal. But I don’t know
really how it works. I was sort of saying to my husband, you
know ‘what about the money and everything’ and he was saying
‘yes but they’re people and they’ve been harassed, they’ve been
maltreated’. So it’s very difficult, but I think that when you’re
struggling, when the nation is struggling, it sort of gets annoying
when people that you might consider as foreign, when perhaps
it’s not politically correct to call them foreign.
(Interview 16)

The idea of nationhood and belonging was something that clearly exer-
cised Emma. She used a rhetoric familiar from the tabloid (and other) press
and media. Nonetheless, her statement ‘I’m actually quite proud of being