British national identity was never homogeneous but always internally contested

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)

It is nice that what eventually became the late British Empire has not been ruled by an ‘English’ dynasty since the early eleventh century: since then a motley parade of Normans (Plantagenets), Welsh (Tudors), Scots (Stuarts), Dutch (House of Orange) and Germans (Hanoverians) have squatted on the imperial throne. No one much cared until the philological revolution and a paroxysm of English nationalism in World War I. House of Windsor rhymes with House of Schöonbrunn or House of Versailles. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 402 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: British homogeneity was always a mask over deep internal cleavages; Britishness functioned as an unmarked norm against which ethnicity was measured — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 337; The English have never bothered to define themselves — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 977 (+1 more)

Related

• British homogeneity was always a mask over deep internal cleavages (similarity 0.90)
• Britishness functioned as an unmarked norm against which ethnicity was measured (similarity 0.84)
• English national feeling emerged only with the philological revolution and World War I (similarity 0.84)
• The English have never bothered to define themselves (similarity 0.83)
• English national identity descends from a mongrel mixed ancestry (similarity 0.79)
• British national homogeneity is a retrospective construct, not a historical reality. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• British homogeneity was always a mask over deep internal cleavages #corroborates (0.95)
• Britishness functioned as an unmarked norm against which ethnicity was measured #expands (0.85) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 337
• English national feeling emerged only with the philological revolution and World War I #exemplifies (0.80) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 402
• The English have never bothered to define themselves #corroborates (0.75) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 977