杰森·奥昆达耶关于定义“英格兰人”身份的文章引起了我的共鸣，映照出我作为少数族裔成员的亲身经历（《当然，非白人也可以是英格兰人。那么为什么右派不能放过这个问题？》，9月26日）。小时候，我在20世纪90年代和21世纪头十年的多元文化城市莱斯特长大，曾因想自称“英格兰人”而被权威人士——他们绝大多数是白人——“纠正”。这是一个我无法拥有的标签，隐含的意思是，由于我的肤色，这不是我的权利。我很快就明白，自称“英国人”是更好、惹麻烦更少的选择。
Jason Okundaye’s piece on defining Englishness mirrored my own experiences as a member of an ethnic minority ( Of course you can be English if you’re not white. So why can’t the right leave the question alone?, 26 September As a child, growing up in multicultural Leicester in the 1990s and 2000s, I was “corrected” by adults in positions of authority – the vast majority of whom were white – for wanting to call myself English. It was a descriptor that I could not claim and, implicitly, was not my right because of my skin colour. I learned very quickly that referring to myself as British was the better, less objectionable option. It always rubbed me up the wrong way.
这始终让我感到别扭。我的家庭要过多久才算“足够英格兰”？要过几代人？我热爱我的出生国，当我在国外时，我的“英格兰人”身份从未受到质疑，那么为什么我的祖国不能接受真实的我？
At what point does my family become “English” enough? How many generations later? I love my country of birth, and when I am abroad my Englishness is never brought into question, so why can my country not accept me as I am?
我相信，像我这样的亲身经历说明了为什么少数族裔成年人“更倾向于认同‘英国人’身份”：这是历史上被安排“归位”、以及为了避免与那些无法看透肤色之人陷入精力耗尽的循环争论的渴望共同作用的结果。马里亚·西达特 加拿大多伦多考虑到我祖辈的家族姓氏混合了诺曼法语、荷兰语和胡格诺派法语，我们可能从抵达至今一直生活在英格兰境内，且我出生于伦敦，我一直自视为“英国人”而非“英格兰人”，这奇怪吗？
I believe that lived experiences like mine indicate why ethnic-minority adults “prefer an identification with Britishness”: a potent mix of historically being put in one’s place, and a desire to avoid exhausting circular arguments with those who cannot see beyond the colour of one’s skin. Maariyah Seedat Toronto, Canada Given that my grandparents’ family names are a mixture of Norman French, Dutch and Huguenot French, and we have probably lived within the borders of England from arrival to today, and that I was born in London, is it strange that I have always regarded myself as British and not English?
我对“英格兰人”的理解，要么是居住在乡村孤立地带的陈腐迂腐的上层阶级，要么是在大使馆或保险公司担任某种后台角色，要么是生活在围绕着一家（前）工厂的联排房屋街道上、由非常相似的人组成的工人阶级社区中。
My understanding of being English is either the staid and stuffy upper classes residing in rural isolation or having some background role in an embassy or assurance office or living in a working-class community of very similar people in the terraced streets around a (former) factory.
那不是我。我对苏格兰、威尔士、爱尔兰、康沃尔、西印度群岛、巴基斯坦、澳大利亚、印度、孟加拉国、新西兰、加拿大、非洲和美国等其他英国文化，更不用说西欧，以及最近的东欧，都同样投入。
That isn’t me. I am as invested in the other British cultures of Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Cornwall, the West Indies, Pakistan, Australia, India, Bangladesh, New Zealand, Canada, Africa and the US, not to mention western Europe and more recently eastern Europe.
单纯作为英格兰人的定义是如此狭隘，而我为能像我的邻居一样被视为英国人而感到自豪。
Simply being English is such a restrictive definition, and I am proud to be counted as British as any of my neighbours.
马克·詹姆斯·斯莱特 康沃尔赫尔斯顿 杰森·奥昆达耶问道：“你能是英格兰人且非白人吗？”根据政府2021年人口普查自身的种族编码系统，答案是否定的。英格兰人作为白人的一个子类别出现，而不在别处。因此，使用这一编码方案无法将自己描述为例如“黑人英格兰人”，而你可以选择宣称自己是“黑人英国人”。
Mark James Slater Helston, Cornwall Jason Okundaye asks “Can you be English and non-white?”The answer is no, according to the government’s own system of coding ethnicities for the 2021 census. English appears as a subcategory of white, and not elsewhere. Thus it is not possible using this coding scheme to describe oneself as, for example, Black English, whereas you can choose to declare yourself Black British.
因此，“英格兰性”的种族主义含义被内嵌在编码方案中，直到“英格兰人”被移出其颜色类别，被视为一种文化认同（无论那是什么），而不是DNA的结果。
So the racist implications of “Englishness” are baked into the coding scheme until such time as “English” is moved out of its colour category and treated as a cultural identity (whatever that is) rather than as a consequence of DNA.
理查德·西布鲁克博士 伦敦贝肯纳姆 杰森·奥昆达耶声称一个简单的真理：“不存在单一的、历史上固定的群体，使得今天的‘英格兰人’由此衍生”，但他忽略了一个更重要的普遍观点。
Dr Richard Seabrook Beckenham, London While Jason Okundaye claims as a simple truth that “there is no single, historically fixed population from which today’s ‘English’ have descended”, he misses a more important general point.
虽然我能声称作为祖父、父亲、丈夫、研究员和作家是一个负责任的个人行动者，但我无法为我曾在其中行动并继续行动的基本结构承担责任。我出生于肯特郡坎特伯雷，因此我是英格兰人。我的出生证明日期为1938年10月20日，记录我的“性别”为“男孩”。我根本不对我的国籍或性别负责。
While I am able to claim to be a personally responsible agent as a grandfather, father, husband, researcher and writer, I am unable to claim responsibility for the fundamental structure within which I have acted and continue to act. I was born in Canterbury, Kent and thus I am English. My birth certificate, dated 20 October 1938, records my “sex” as “boy”. I am simply not responsible for my nationality or gender.
因此，我作为一个英国人，既不感到自豪，也不感到羞耻：这只是一个事实。这反过来也意味着，我不能仅凭国籍或性别这些特征，去奉承或谴责他人。右翼基于血统和生物遗传的执念毫无根据：它是无稽之谈，且粗鄙不堪。艾伦·贝克 剑桥
I am accordingly neither proud nor ashamed to be an Englishman: that is just a matter of fact. And this in turn means that I cannot either adulate or castigate others of different nationality or gender on the grounds of those characteristics alone. The right’s fixation based on bloodlines and biological inheritance has no foundation: it is baseless and crass. Alan Baker Cambridge