Page 170 - White Lives The Interplay of 'Race', Class, and Gender in Everyday Life

How English am I? 163
tions (or misrepresentations). What was clear, however, was that she herself
would prefer to have as little as possible to do with the whole concept of
national identity:

I think on the way, on how deep-rooted your sense of national identity
is. I mean, I don’t think mine is terribly deep-rooted, and I don’t really
want it to be either. I think it’s a dangerous thing. Um, I mean I don’t,
really really don’t hold with the notion, and I’m absolutely terrified of
even the mildest kind of idea that, you know, all these people are visi-
tors, or all these people weren’t . . . these people’s grandparents weren’t
born here, or something. I just think that’s a terribly sort of vicious road
to sort of go along. And maybe I’m just being very hard on people who I
hear saying that, I think. Because one shouldn’t label people, but I think
that’s probably got more to do with my shock at . . . because I don’t
have a terribly strong sense of national identity.
(Interview 17)

Deborah also used the organic metaphor of national identity being ‘deep-
rooted’. But, in contrast to Helen, who was quoted earlier saying she felt
‘rooted’ in London, here deep-rooted identities had threatening connota-
tions. It was presented almost as a pathology, something that ‘terrifies’ De-
borah. She saw using national identity to question people’s belonging as ‘a
terribly sort of vicious road to go along’, evoking national identity’s connec-
tions to fascism.
Madeleine, who had spent her earliest years in Hong Kong, but then
moved back to Britain with her parents when she was about 9 years old,
believed that growing up with Margaret Thatcher in power framed her view
of national identity ‘um . . . I’ve never really liked the idea of being British
to be honest. It’s always been a bit of a “oh, God do I have to be? I’d really
rather not”’. Madeleine went on to explain:

I think that ...um... it’s obviously partly to do with having been
brought up somewhere else, and having travelled quite a lot – when I
was a kid and then again when I left school. And having, you know, been
to other places. But I think it’s also because I’ve been interested in other
cultures and had close friends from other cultures and been interested
in the history of other cultures. And every time you read the history of
anybody else, there are the British, do you know what I mean? Enslaving
people and shooting people [laugh] and it just gets to the point where
you think; ‘I can’t bear it, it’s just hideous’. It feels like, sometimes it
feels like a weight that you carry around with you. And I know times
when I’ve been travelling. I was in East Africa, when I was about 19 and
it was when the Americans bombed Libya and they’d refuelled here. And
I’d been having a really nice, I was travelling on my own and everyone
had been really friendly. And suddenly people would stop you and say