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Winkfield Twyman's avatar

We need more essays addressing this intricate topic. For example, what is "White English Identity?" Aren't the English a fine melting pot of the Anglos, the Saxons, the Angles, the Jutes, the Celtic Britons, the Danes, the Norsemen, and the Normans? And let's not forget the Vikings. I write from afar in San Diego, California, USA, so perhaps I am missing something. I find elements of White English Indentity in my own conception of myself, in place names like the James River, Chesterfield County or Ampthill. All of these names which informed my childhood in Virginia originated in England. Similarly, my very family name "Twyman." came from Birchington, Kent, England. My genetic heritage is probably 10% percent English. Are the White English my people? https://twyman.substack.com/p/who-are-my-people?utm_source=publication-search

The comment of Greg Smith intrigues me as to identity as a social construction framework. Maybe, identity derives more from internal locus of control as consciousness. As I grow older, I feel so far away from external creation of boundaries.

Best,

W. F. Twyman, Jr.

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Greg Smith's avatar

John... this is good as far as it goes, but as a sociologist I think it needs to be in counterpoint with identity seen though a social constructionist framework. Idenitites are "imagined communties", never reified and fixed cultures. They work because of the creation of ingroup and outgroup boundaries, and the interplay between these groups, and the languages, narratives, symbols and rituals which are used to define them. People may have blurred or bipolar identities. What we are seeing is a political manipulation of the concept of white Englishness... Personally I am not convinced that Englishness exists in a real sense... I wrote this... at Jonathan Chaplin's instigation..

Title of paper: Will there always be an England? https://www.southampton.ac.uk/~assets/doc/comms%20and%20marketing/Will%20There%20always%20be%20England%20-%20Greg%20Smith.odt?

There is a more extended treatment of my theoretical approach to identities in my Trans-Atlantic Evangelicalism: Toxic, Fragmented or Redeemable? (2020)

https://williamtemplefoundation.org.uk/temple-tracts/

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