National Identity
Thursday, November 05, 2009
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Apologies for the rather self-indulgent posts this week - but here’s another. Hopefully you can bend it to something useful.
My new American passport arrived today. Yes, reader, I marr...., ahh, b******, I mean, yes, reader, I am neither one thing nor the other. Or am I?
Which is all a roundabout way of asking the question -’What is my national/cultural identity’?
Well, national and cultural identity aren’t exactly the same thing.
The way I see it, through an accident of birth, I have two pieces of documentation which give me citizenship rights in two countries. As for cultural affiliations, well, I’ve only lived in the USA for a few years, as a very young kid. The rest of my life has been spent in the UK. When I go to the USA, I feel like a British visitor. So culturally, if you like, I’m a Brit. Then again, how important is nationality to my identity? I really don’t know about that one!
There must be lots more people - students and teachers - with a dual national background or who have parents who weren’t born in the UK. Which culture do they feel closer to, and why?
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Hi David ,
I should be marking but responding to your blogging is so much more interesting. Your comment self-indulgent? I don’t think so and I suspect neither do you. The yawning gap between national and cultural identity was illustrated rather neatly at the ‘Fort Hood’ base in Texas. For one view read today’s Daily Telegraph. And its worth bearing in mind Orwell’s remark that ‘some things are still true even if the Daily Telegraph’ says its true! For another see the Guardian to check out a lot of very nervous left-liberal columnists.
Posted by on 11/07 at 07:48 AM
