EnglishWoodsman

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Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or , and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! Gap9551 (talk) 17:44, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Ethnicity of UK nationals

Hey, I reverted your change on Roald Dahl earlier today, which changed it from saying "British" to "Welsh." To provide more context, you might want to read WP:UKNATIONALS and these old discussions on Dahl's talk page: Talk:Roald_Dahl/Archive_1#Welsh_or_English? Talk:Roald_Dahl/Archive_3#Welsh/British. To summarize, describing someone as either English or Welsh or British (or Scottish, or Irish, or Manx, or Islanders, or...) has been hotly debated over the years. Wikipedia's policy is to describe people by their nationality and not their ethnicity, but of course nationality in the UK is debated, especially in the context of the country of Ireland, the Scottish independence movement, and the Welsh independence movement.

Ultimately, Wikipedia editors have decided that we generally want to use what most reliable sources describe the person as. In the case of many people, it might be English, Welsh, or Scottish. Dahl is typically described at British however, presumably because he moved over the years (living much of his life in England) and his family was from Norway, so it's difficult to say that he was specifically Welsh.

Does that make sense? If not, I'd love to discuss it. :)

Gbear605 (talk) 03:24, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't know if you are English, "British" or from outside this archipelago but the attitude of referring to anyone as "British" is itself contentious due to the consequences of the British Empire, primarily controlled by the English aristocracy, undermining Welsh, Irish and Scottish identities.

Now, it may be the case that Dahl was indeed not "Welsh" in any meaningful sense but he was more of an exception and I think it's unhelpful to whitewash non-English inhabitants as "British" by default and rather default to their country of origin unless they say otherwise. Wales, Scotland and Ireland are still countries in their own right and so people born there should be labeled as such *unless there is good reason* to generalise them as British, rather than take the colonial era mindset of assimilation. We wouldn't call all Europeans "European" just because the EU is a political body with its own layer of citizenship. EnglishWoodsman (talk) 08:56, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have added before sending, that I appreciate your reply and effort, I didn't mean to come off so aggressive in that former message. EnglishWoodsman (talk) 08:57, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

EnglishWoodsman, as you guessed above, I’m not from anywhere in the British Isles. I definitely acknowledge the difficult situation involved with erasure of identities - I’m actually in favor of both Scottish and Welsh independence, as well as Northern Ireland joining Ireland - but my main concern here is achieving consistency on Wikipedia and not having edit warring across pages. Unfortunately, Wikipedia has tried and failed in the past to get consensus about how to refer to people from various parts of Britain, and at this point the only consensus is not changing pages from their status quo unless there’s a strong reason to do so, like most sources describing them a certain way (and unfortunately, people don’t generally care about oppression as a reason on Wikipedia). Gbear605 (talk) 12:57, 25 November 2020 (UTC)