okay, there was a story recently about hazel blears receiving a suggestion that ethnic minorities should be 'rebranded'with the word 'british' in their title because this would help solve racial tensions and stuff like that. i'm all for trying to solve racial tension and 'stuff like that,' but I have to say that this idea is one of the dumbest proposals i've ever heard. and, while i know that HB claims she didn't suggest it, rather it was suggested to her, it has all the hallmarks of a government trying to look like its doing something constructive by changing the semantics, in the hope that the confusion of the new 'brands' will make us forget the real life issues. dont misinterpret that, i dont for a second think thats what the government is trying to do. at least, I hope it isnt. thats just what such a suggestion feels like.

perhaps i should clarify a few things before i proceed, because what i say may be deemed offensive if i don't provide some sort of explan. that said, i think this explan sucks - if i can get away with saying what i say then so should everyone else be able to. but still......

i'm mixed race. to be honest i'm not entirely sure how mixed race i am. but for the large part, i'm a mixture of nigerian and welsh. born and raised in england. which is really brilliant because (I play football) it means if i played footie for a national team, i could play for enlgand, wales or nigeria.

which brings me to point one, which is actually an aside re that idiot minister/peer who complained that ethnic minorities support cricket teams like the west indies and not england. to qualify this, he probably isn't quite an idiot, i haven't read fully what he said, but i do know he wanted a 'cricket test' introduced because he thought that ethnic minorities supporting non-uk national teams meant they weren't integrating properly. this is just dumb. period. if i'd played footie professionally (I quit cos I'm a girl and i realised that ya dont get paid, but have it on good authority that if i'd been a boy i'd have got signed to play pro) then I probably would have chosen to play for nigeria. but thats because at the time (when they were in the world cup, '94) they were better than england were so it would have improved my chances of lifting the cup or something. its not cos i am in denial about my britishness. i still support nigeria and wales, and i love it when they do well (which aint often, lol). but thats not denial of englishness or my britishness. its just a recognition that i have other influences/allegiances. i dont know what i'd do if they played each other, at least not if it was nigeria v england or wales. but, in the upcoming england v wales game, i want england to win cos they're more likely to do well overall (and i've supported them constantly, whereas i tend to just check in on the others, there's less coverage), tho i'll feel pangs of hurt as well as celebration for any goals that get scored from either side. sometimes i do find it amusing to watch england lose at sports, but thats more for the sheer irony of it - we're really great at inventing the games, then sittin back and watchin others thrash us at them, be it cricket, tennis, or football. but that still isn't a denial of my britishness, its just my ability to detach myself from a certain situation and view it from an objective standpoint.

anyway, back to my original point, 'ethnic rebranding.' I love the media jumping on that term because its exactly what i thought when i heard the idea. i can understand why you might rebrand hair shampoo or trainers if they're not selling very well, but renaming ethnic minorities because they aren't integrating very well is not going to have qutie the same effect is it? in other words, I'm not like a pair of nike air max!

i also find it quite insulting that some person who has never met me thinks they can decide my identity for me, screw that. (this is a bit flippant, see my next point)

more importantly, the only effect this will have is changing the series of tickboxes i'm forced to complete every time i apply for university, a job, healthcare, etc., etc. i hate having to do that. i can see why it is necessary, but at the same time there's always that naggin question of 'did i get in because i fulfilled their quota of ethnic minorities for this year?' and that just plain sucks. i go to oxford uni and i joke that the only reason i got in was because i single-peronally gave them their quota of ethnic minorities, working class, low income, comprehensive shcooled, single parent familied, no prior family history of university, people. plus, it puts me in the tricky situation of having to answer a question i just really dont give that much thought to. i had to fill in a form once when i was about 8 yrs old and i couldnt decide which box to tick so i asked my mum (she's the welsh one). trying to be really pc, she said "well...how do you see yourself?" i responded with my take on the whole shebang of box-ticking-ethnic-idnetity-crap and said "in the mirror like everyone else." i pretty much stick to that, even today years later. i know a lot about 'black history' and about 'white history' and i have opinions about both. and i am aware that i cant be too por-black because i'm part white and nor can i be too pro-white because i'm part black. and having faced racial abuse and harrassment on a serious level from a young age i find it hard to be intolerant and prejudiced (except against everton or man utd. fans but thats not prejudice, lol, prejudice is unfairly judging someone based on an arbitrary fact about them, but they support everton/man utd. so they deserve all they get, j/p). but i really dont think about how black or white i am unless someone asks me am i black or am i white, or they make an issue out of it. the way i see it, I'm S* T'** (my name here and it should be 4 of * but it wnot let me do that, lol), and everything else is secondary. I'm just me, and while these things have an influence they don't define me...maybe that's why i dont take too quickly to other people using them to define me for me?

but like i said, all its gonna do is affect the titles of the tick boxes you fill in on forms. it wont get to the root issues, the problems in society or the underlying causes. 'and i can see that is a problem' as a poet once said. i remember filling in forms when they didnt have all that many categories, and i ticked 'black african' because they didnt have an 'other' box and i couldn't tick 'white'. i also remember ticking 'other (please explain)' which grated slightly because it made me feel insignificant, like my racial group isn't worth giving a category to. it was the 'please explain' bit that grated, made me feel like it implied i had done something wrong by being born mixed race. bear in mind that i was real young back then, but i'm sure a better wording could have been thought of, lol.

this 'rebranding' thing could be taken to absurdium, with 23 pages of diff categories to appease all the disgruntled people in society, but it still wont fix the real problems that we face in today's society. its like, the point is here *

and this idea is here * (imagine it miles awy, this ite wont lemme do that either, lol)

i really couldn't care less if the next time i filled in a form it had a nice little section just for me that said 'mixed race: afro-british' because it wouldn't make a difference. I'd still get called nigger by people who didn't like the colour of my skin once I'd finished form-filling and rejoined the real world. and mosty people dont find out my 'ethnic mix' until they've known me for ages because i usually find that if i'm with decent people, the issue just doesnt really come up all that often.

besides which, Im nigerian/welsh born and raised in england for god's sake. I've fully accepted the fact that there will never be a box that fully encapsulates me, and nor do i want there to be because even if they had a box saying 'nigerian/welsh/english' i'd still think i'm more than just the sum of my parts. i found it funny going around fresher's fair and seeing all these jewish society stalls and scottish society stalls and american society stalls and all that, i made a joke bet with my friends that there wouldn't be a 'nigerian-english-welsh society stall'.

getting a little more serious tho, i hate the way people think they can play with semantics and have a real effect when they haven't even fully considered the semantics they're using. some politicans complain that ethnic minorities don't identify with british society or being british or stuff like that. some of them probably even think that this 'rebranding' would help minorities to identify with british society. but i think thats where the semantics could possibly do with being changed. to be perfectly honest and clear: i dont identify with british society, or nigerian society for that matter, i identify with myself because i'm the only thing that i'm identical to. i relate to british society. and i can do that and still relate to nigerian soceity at the same time. i can relate to my family who have experienced what i have experienced and i can relate to politicians who want to make society better because i want that too. essentially, what im trying to say here is that we identify with ourselves, we relate to other people. there is a difference. i'm british and i'm a part of british society because i can relate to other britons, but i dont have to identify with them. i have lots of friends who i wouldn't say i identify with, i just relate to them. i cant identify with them because they are not me (or I, or whatever). the very word 'identity' is an all or nothing concept, and its defunct when talking about several (or numerous) people because they aren't all or nothing the same. 'relate' has much more subtlety and shades to it, and i think that if we started looking at what it means to 'be british' in terms of what relates (i.e. links) the people of britain, instead of looking at it in terms of what gives british people their 'identity' which is prone to attempts to shoe-horn people into a narrow conception of 'british' then we may start to get somewhere...

anyway, that's a helluva long post for a topic (ethnic rebranding) that i dont really care about.

hit me back, cos i wanna know what people think.