 It's common to hear people describe themselves or be described as black British, but can you be black and English? That was a discussion prompted by Labour MP David Lambie on LBC today, and he had an interesting and challenging conversation with one caller. Let's take a look. You keep saying that you are African-Caribbean, which is fine, but how can you be African-Caribbean and English? I couldn't be African, I'm English, but I certainly could not call myself African-Caribbean. You could be Irish though, you could have Irish. No, I'm not Irish, I'm not Scottish. You could be. No, I'm not, because I have looked my name right the way back to Middle Ages, my maiden name, and I'm Anglo-Saxon. Great. But you will never be English, you are African-Caribbean. But why would I never be English? Because you're African-Caribbean. Now the caller there is saying that it's impossible for David Lambie to be English, because essentially because he's black. That also includes his children. She's saying even though Lambie was born in England, even though his children were born in England, they can never be English. That's a position she's putting forward, and not in a very sensitive way. She's saying you can never be English because you're African-Caribbean. Let's see how David Lambie responds. Britain 400 years ago started going out into the world. It colonised and conquered a lot of the world. A lot of the world has ended up coming back to the mother country. My parents were part of that generation who came from the Caribbean. When I took a DNA test, I actually had Scottish in me, probably as a result of that. Someone somewhere, frankly, got their leg over with one of my ancestors, and I've got Scottish blood running through me. I said that gently, but it could have been horrendous. Let's be clear about that. Here I am, having grown up in this country, have been born of this country. Actually, the truth is it's a myth that there's one English ethnicity. There's not because England has always been a country in which Huguenots, Danes, all sorts of people have passed through. When you say you are English, I'm not saying that that doesn't mean something to you and matter hugely, because there are probably, as you put it, years and years, hundreds of years of experience of that, but it is to say that, for me, the fact that I was born here and the fact that my sensibilities are English mean that I want to claim that heritage as well. That was such a good argument. It was so well put. It was also really respectful of the person who was calling you. It hadn't been particularly respectful towards him. He's saying, look, if English heritage to you means that you have had members of your family living on this particular island for years and decades or whatever, that's fine. That's your English identity, but there are plenty of English identities which don't involve that. Actually, that has always been the case. If he gives you example there of the empire and he's saying that, look, it is the case that people have been English in various different places and in various different contexts. I can be English even if the backstory is slightly different to yours. I thought it was really impressive the way he put that. Let's take a look to see if the caller is convinced. Now, I'm very comfortable saying I'm British, Black British. Of course I am and I'm very, very proud. No one could say I wasn't because I talk about it all the time about my Caribbean roots and I know the Caribbean very well. But it's the same that I'm English. Sorry, what? You're British, but you're not English. Well, that's the point I think you're making and I'm disagreeing with that. Tell me, what do you think? What do you think? If I was born in the Caribbean as a white person, I certainly wouldn't call myself a Caribbean. Well, I'm afraid. Have you ever been to the Caribbean, Jean? I haven't. No, I haven't. Well then, you probably don't realise that in countries like Barbados, there are significant white Caribbean populations who have been there for hundreds of years and they are significantly more Caribbean than I am. That was such a good argument and such a good point. I think it doesn't get said that often because what you often hear from English nationalists is that, look, we're not racist, we just think that we should have a country which is white and they can have a country which is black. Everyone else gets to have an ethnically homogenous country. Why can't we have an ethnically homogenous country? What it completely ignores is that actually there are loads and loads and loads of countries which are way more ethnically diverse than Britain. This assumption, Britain is this really multicultural place and everyone else gets to have ethnically homogeneity. Obviously, I don't think ethnically homogeneity is a good thing, by the way, but arguing on their own terms, much of the Caribbean, Brazil, the US, all way, way more diverse in terms of heritage and race than England is. I think that was so well put and clearly the caller just hadn't really thought of that. She'd assumed that when she's talking about the Caribbean, everyone is what she thinks of as a Caribbean person, which is someone with the same skin tone as David Lambie. Actually, he tells her that's complete nonsense. You've really got the wrong end of the stick there. Now, let's keep watching because you're probably not going to be surprised, but she does get really racist. Again, you're not going to be surprised because David Lambie deals with it really well. Well, all I say is the whole world is polluting everybody the way it's going. What's that phrase polluting? It is. Why is it polluting, Jean? Because you are what you are. You are where you are for it. But hang on, Jean. Jean, Jean. You're an inheritance. Jean, Jean, Jean, I can tell that you are more senior than I am in age, so I want to be polite. No, don't do that. In this conversation. Well, that's how I was brought up, that you polite to your seniors, Jean. But what I'm saying is the word pollution. Where's that word pollution come from? It's a very negative way. Well, I'm sorry for that, but I'm not from our home. it's a negative way to describe the fact that people meet one another, they fall in love, they have kids, they move borders, sometimes through war, sometimes through economic reasons, and they become what they become when they are of that country. And just as you can be in America and you can be African American or you can be Italian American or you can be Irish American, how is it that here in England you can only claim that Englishness effectively, Gene, if you're white? Really, really well put again. I want to bring in Ash here because, I mean, as well as, you know, I was just looking in saying that was a very well done argument by David Lamme there to quite a, you know, it seems quite a racist caller. What do you make of the broader issue there? Because what David Lamme is doing there, which is to say, no, Englishness can be an inclusive identity. It doesn't have to be tied to whiteness. To some degree cuts against what some progressives say, because I often hear people on the left say, look, no, Britishness is an inclusive identity. That's why we're, you know, more comfortable with it than Englishness. And Englishness, they say, no, Englishness is quite white. And that's why we're not comfortable with it. I mean, what strategy do you think is right to say that, yes, Englishness is racist, so we should reject it or do what David Lamme is doing, which is fight for inclusive Englishness. Okay, first, I'm going to quote somebody surprising. I'm going to quote Enoch Powell, who I actually think was right on this thing, which is the life of nations is lived largely in the imagination. So rather than trying to find something fixed and unmoving and true, the question we always have to ask ourselves is how is the nation being symbolized, imagined, constituted and thought of? And that's something which of course has got latitude as well as constraints. And I don't think that politics has dealt with that hybridity very well. And when I want to find interesting answers to this question of Englishness, Britishness, people of color, and diaspora, I don't turn to politicians, I turn to artists, and I come back again and again to one of my favorite MCs, AJ Tracy. And I've really recommend, even if Grime is not your thing, listen to the song, Force Nine, because there's this verse, which is essentially like a Stuart Hall verse, right? It starts with a play for an England squad, and I'm with an England squad, goes on and on and on. And then it's like, in Trinidad Fam, I'm the English Bob White, I wanted an English top. And it's about not saying, I'm English, I'm white. And it's also not saying I identify with a very narrow definition of Englishness. It's through the lens of a English art form, i.e., Grime, which has come from diaspora cultures, and also has its origins in jungle MCing. Through that, combined with the diversity within sport and sportswear culture, defining in Englishness, which is also outward looking hybrid, Trinidadian, black, all of these things. And so rather than trying to close down, I think these questions and produce these exclusionary categories, what he does within this verse is sit right within them and celebrate them. And so I think that this is what I mean by there's a certain richness and peace with indeterminacy that art can produce when it comes to addressing some of these questions about Englishness versus Britishness. And when we're coming back to this question of, you know, the lives of nations being lived largely within the imagination, while these are the things which I think create some of the imaginative space. Now just to sort of talk a bit about national identity, ethnic identity, and racial identity, one of the things which I think Stuart Hall, again, one of my favorite theorists on this, so correctly identified is that there is an assumed racial content within how we conceive of as Britishness. And Britishness itself is sort of seen as merely the extension of Englishness. And that's the reason why you do have nationalist movements in Scotland, in Northern Ireland, and in Wales saying, well, we don't want any part of Britain at all, because that is just English domination. And there is also a sense that England has never really engaged with its own identity outside of their history of domination and expansion and projection across borders, starting with its own internal colonies. So I think that's why these questions become so fraught, especially when you add race to the mix. For me personally, there's no other culture which could have produced someone as obnoxious as me other than England, right? It's also something which I find so funny, which is when people say, oh, Ash Sarko, you hate Britain. I did two useless degrees. I did two English literature degrees. And it's because I love the English language because I love English literary history. And I also love formally colonized and indeed, at the time, colonized subjects who took that English language to articulate resistance to the British Empire. I love that, except I don't feel the need to essentially litigate or argue the extent of my Englishness with idiot racists, because precisely they're idiot racists. What I would rather do is sit within that indeterminacy in a way that AJ Tracy does in a way which is just so dynamic and so fun and experience it. I don't have to argue it with tosses. I mean, in a way, I'm quite in favour of arguing with tosses. I saw, you know, one of the big social media responses to that was it was irresponsible for LBC to allow that person on, why did David Lamy bother with the argument instead of cutting her off? And I think my position there is, look, even though I don't think anyone should be forced to subject themselves to that kind of conversation, of course, you have every right to say, I'm not having this conversation. But if someone like David Lamy does want to have that argument publicly, I think all power to him, because the caller there wasn't actually a marginal person, I think she was probably expressing quite a reaction review, which many people in the country share. And by having that very persuasive, very sensitive conversation between David Lamy and that caller, I think maybe he did persuade some people. And I think that probably, you know, is a good thing. So I can, you know, I can see why it's an uncomfortable position for someone to be put in. But the way he did that, I think probably did more good than harm.