jym🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Political commentator Stuart Thomson believes that ethnicity is something you can choose or opt into…. So does that mean that as a white person born in England I can say that my ethnicity is Nigerian or Pakistani etc? If ethnicity is now to be treated as a choice rather than a genetic reality, then surely every white English person can now identify as an ETHNIC minority… thereby removing the need for DEI initiatives because there would no longer be a white English ethnic majority? 🤷🏻‍♀️ Ethnicity cannot be conflated with nationality, culture or religion - the term that always used is ETHNIC minority, not cultural, religious or national minority because these ARE all things that people can opt in and out of. Progressives and politicians trying to warp facts and reality to allow ethnicity to be a choice are opening a volatile can of worms. For a start, that choice would have to be available to EVERYONE, including white English people. And we all know that there is no way in hell they would ever allow those who are actually ethnically English to claim to be an ethnic minority. The ethnic minorities would be up in arms at their ethnicity being claimed and appropriated by the English. From a census point of view - or any recording of facts where ethnicity is noted for that matter - what would be the point? If you aren’t prepared to record facts, then don’t go through the motions of pretending to do so. It’s a waste of time and money to produce inaccurate or dishonest data. Finally I agree with @MaajidNawaz about dangers of conflating nationality and ethnicity. Nationality is something you are given based on your place of birth, the person you marry, your parent’s nationality or the country you move to. Nationality is a completely different thing to ethnicity because you CAN apply for it, you can choose it you can reject it, and in some cases it can be taken away from you. None of these things can be said for ethnicity - ethnicity is immutable, something that remains unchanged wherever you go in the world or choose to live. Politicians and media commentators promoting the whole “ethnicity is a choice or an option” narrative are playing a divisive and potentially dangerous game. They will never allow the white English to get away with claiming to be any non white ethnicity, so they are pushing for a lie that will only insult and disadvantage one ethnic group - the English. I’m a CivNat who hates the fact that ethnicity is increasingly used to cause division in this country. But we have to be honest here- disingenuous and insulting bills like this can only result in one thing and that’s increased support for ethno-nationalism. So I can’t help but wonder… is this what proponents of this bill actually want, and if so …Why?