In a tweet over the weekend Dave Lammy displayed supreme ignorance in his understanding of ethnicity and nationality. Lammy was upset over the question of ethnicity in the forthcoming census and bemoaned the fact that he couldn't identify as both black and English. Unfortunately for Dave, the English are an ethnic group in their own right (as are the Scots and Welsh). Even on Wikipedia (or Woke-ipedia) the definition of English people is stated clearly as 'an ethnic group native to England'.
He argues that his qualification for being English is having been born in London, but this fact alone does not make someone English. If Dave had been born in Cardiff that wouldn't make him a Welshman either. Spike Milligan, Rudyard Kipling and George Orwell were all born in India, but they were not Indians. Birthplace does not define your ethnicity.
It's not the census that's in a muddle, it's Dave's thinking.
There are many ironies in Lammy's sudden longing to be English. Throughout his political career he has shown nothing but hostility towards white people, for whom he seems to blame all the world's evils on. Now he wants in on that identity? Or is it that he wants to deny that identity? If the ethnicity of the English is to be denied, while the ethnicity of others is to be preserved, that in itself is an inherently racist notion.
Dave Lammy a racist? Who'd have thought it!
