Student Soapbox: “Stop Assuming I’m Not British!”

I was in Tesco at Cannon Park and whilst I was with my friend, overheard a woman telling her toddler that she couldn’t find something. Innocently, the toddler pointed over to my friend and said ‘Why don’t you ask her?’ The woman, who had obviously heard the two of us speaking Polish, responded with a mutter ‘No. She’s not even from here’. That did it for me. I said at the top of my voice: ‘You know, it’s funny… because, EVEN THOUGH I SPEAK POLISH, I AM ENGLISH’. At which point she swore to my face.

‘You know, it’s funny… because, EVEN THOUGH I SPEAK POLISH, I AM ENGLISH’.

Being English and Polish, I’ve put up with this crap before. It was my friend who was attacked in Tesco’s, but it could’ve been me. It’s wrong either way, but the fact that I’m technically British makes it worse.

I grew up in Luxembourg, but I went to school in England, and have always thought, read and written in English. People have questioned my Polish nationality my whole life, but nobody ever had a problem with me being English…until I moved to England.

People tell me ‘you can’t be English, because you haven’t lived here’. Well, my Dad’s English, and I speak English fluently. I drink extortionate amounts of tea. I read the same magazines and watched the same TV shows as a kid. What is it that doesn’t make me English?

What is it that doesn’t make me English?

Is it because I can speak five languages, including French and Polish fluently? Or that I’m more open-minded when it comes to ‘foreigners’ than some? Perhaps it’s the fact that I didn’t know that ‘chilli’ was a dish before I moved here, and that I thought that ‘third-wheeling’ and ‘spooning’ were really dirty sex positions before Urban Dictionary explained them to me.

On a serious note, though, I am getting into the idea of rejecting nationalities altogether. I have a couple of friends who do, mostly those who are so international that they come from several continents, and who consider themselves ‘citizens of the world’. I’ll settle for ‘citizen of Europe’. Both of my parents work for the EU. I’m proud of that.

Nowadays, when someone questions my nationality, I take out my British passport and throw it at them. The more settled I become at Warwick, the less I feel the need to immediately tell people about my nationalities. On January 1st 2014, the UK opened its borders to Romanian and Bulgarian migrants. I say ‘Welcome’. Let’s all get on with fixing this country’s economy and making its culture more wonderfully diverse.