Englishness is not defined by ethnicity | Letters

Maariyah Seedat wonders at what point does her family become ‘English’ enough, Mark James Slater has always regarded himself as British and not English. Plus letters from Dr Richard Seabrook and Alan Baker

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.