British homogeneity was always a mask over deep internal cleavages

Evidence

The first of these is the disruptive impact on the traditional categories of “race” and ethnicity. The emergence of the multicultural question has produced a differentiated “racialization” of central areas of British life and culture. Increasingly, the British have been obliged to think of themselves and their relations with others within the UK in racialized terms. Ethnicity, too, has entered the British domestic vocabulary. Whereas in the American self-understanding the US is a society composed of ethnicities, Britain (though in origins quite diverse) has always applied the term to everyone else—Britishness being the empty signifier, the norm against which “difference” (ethnicity) is measured. The rising visibility of ethnic communities, together with the movement toward devolved government, has posed questions about the “homogeneity” of British culture and “Englishness” as an ethnicity, precipitating the multicultural question at the center of a crisis of national identity. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 337 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: British national identity was never homogeneous but always internally contested; England built its history on racial duality while France long asserted national homogeneity; Britishness functioned as an unmarked norm against which ethnicity was measured — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 337

Related

• British national identity was never homogeneous but always internally contested (similarity 0.90)
• Britishness functioned as an unmarked norm against which ethnicity was measured (similarity 0.90)
• Britishness has always been racialized as whiteness though long silenced publicly. (similarity 0.81)
• British national homogeneity is a retrospective construct, not a historical reality. (similarity 0.81)
• British homogeneity was always overstated, masking ruling-class hegemony over the Irish and poor. (similarity 0.80)
• England built its history on racial duality while France long asserted national homogeneity (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• England built its history on racial duality while France long asserted national homogeneity #corroborates (0.85)
• Britishness functioned as an unmarked norm against which ethnicity was measured #expands (0.80) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 337