Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2023 May 30

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May 30

Question about white people in England

Hello. Why do white people born in England tend to describe themselves as much more English rather than British? Thank you. 93.41.96.138 (talk) 16:47, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

First: not just white people. You need to understand that the United Kingdom is just that; a union of historic countries. Englishmen may call themselves either English or British, just as Scots use either Scottish or British. Which is chosen depends upon personal preference and context. Contrasting to, say, Italian then I'm British. Contrasting to Wales then I'm English. Winding up people who feel a need to force others into categories then I'm a Yorkshireman! :-) Martin of Sheffield (talk) 16:53, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

@93.41.96.138:: You have asked an impossible to answer question. The reason is that your question has a presupposition which is not, itself, shown to be true. It may be true, or it may be false, but we just don't know. In your question, you asked "Why do white people born in England tend to describe themselves as much more English rather than British?" The green highlighted text is something that we don't know is true. It makes it impossible to answer "Why do..." questions, where the statement that comes after "Why do..." is not, itself, a widely understood or accepted true statement. Like I said, I'm not saying it is definitely false, I'm just saying that it's truth value is unknown, and for that reason, we can't actually provide any answer to your question. If, however, you could provide us with the source of information where you learned that "white people born in England tend to describe themselves as much more English rather than British", if we could read where YOU are reading that, maybe we could then answer your question. --Jayron32 17:45, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, of course, I understand. I don't know how reliable they are, but I can cite two sources as examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_people and https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-44306737 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.41.96.138 (talk) 21:32, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

One interesting tidbit: For England and Wales, the 2021 United Kingdom census only offered the following "high-level ethnic groups":

"Asian, Asian British, Asian Welsh"

"Black, Black British, Black Welsh, Caribbean or African"

"Mixed or Multiple"

"White"

"Other ethnic group"

(Office for National Statistics)

So while Black and Asian inhabitants of Wales could check an "X Welsh" box, Black and Asian inhabitants of England could not check an "X English" box, only "X British". ---Sluzzelin talk 22:13, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

This very recent RefDesk thread goes into some depth about this issue. Note also that Englishness over Britishness is a totem of [some on] the far-right, see the English Defence League for example. Alansplodge (talk) 08:45, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

The EDL may focus on their Englishness, but there are other far-right groups that emphasise Britishness (e.g. the BNP and Britain First). So I'm not sure the idea that "Englishness over Britishness is a totem of the far-right" is valid. Iapetus (talk) 09:27, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps so (I have amended my post accordingly), but see this article Nationalism, racism, and identity: what connects Englishness to a preference for hard Brexit?:

...an exclusive English identity does seem to have a distinctive, rather ‘nativist’ or ‘ethnocentric’, character with bright boundaries against outsiders and an emphasis on ancestry as a criterion for national belonging. People who subscribe to an exclusive English identity are also more willing to express racist views, while those with European identities tend to be the opposite.

Alansplodge (talk) 13:20, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Quoting from this BBC article: "Its findings suggest 80% of the residents of England identify strongly as English. But it also finds a similar proportion, 82%, strongly identify as British. ... Some have suggested that the British identity is being strangled by rising English nationalism, but that idea is not borne out by the survey." This rather clearly does not support the contention that they tend to describe themselves as much more English rather than British.  --Lambiam 09:03, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Maps

I am a frequent user of and contributor (monetary donations not articles) to Wikipedia. When looking up geographical places I find the maps less than helpful. as they rarely have place names or other geographical references, except for the identity of the searched for place within a blank map. Could Wikipedia up the game a bit when it comes to maps? Thank you. RG 136.34.123.9 (talk) 17:17, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

@136.34.123.9:: Wikipedia is written by random people from all over the world, none of whom is any more qualified to do so than you are. If you see something missing at Wikipedia, there is no one to ask for help and no one whose job it is do fix it. There is only you, who noticed something that is missing, and thus can fix it yourself. No one else has any more responsibility to do so than you do. --Jayron32 17:41, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, I think this reply is rather harsh and, quite frankly, not acceptable. No reader of Wikipedia should be told to "fix it yourself", when they may not have the expertise or the time or whatever to do so. Anybody should be allowed to express wishes or suggestions for improvement even if they do not edit Wikipedia themselves. Among the minority who do actively (and of course voluntarily) work on Wikipedia there are almost always people who are more qualified than you or me (in particular when it comes to a nontrivial task such as the creation of maps), it's a matter of finding them and of convincing them that the request is reasonable and worth implementing. As to finding them, Wikipedia:WikiProject Maps or Wikipedia:Graphics Lab/Map workshop might be a good place to go. As to convincing them, the request is probably too broad and vague to be successful. You should make it more concrete and at the very least provide a few examples where you think the game could be upped; specific map requests are probably more likely to succeed. In any case, do have a look at those pages to get an idea of what is going on. --Wrongfilter (talk) 21:03, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

The drive-by OP is being kind of pushy. If they want to see detailed maps, they should go to Google or Bing or whatever. Maps in wikipedia are generally a guideline at best. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:50, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Articles about places often show the geographical coordinates of the place (right top corner, or under the blank map you mentioned). If you click the icon in front of them, you get an interactive map. And clicking on the coordinates themselves opens a page with a zoomable map and a lot of (links to) other tools (Google Maps, Google Earth, OpenStreetView...). For example: clicking the coordinates 51°13′N 04°25′E in the Antwerp Province article opens this page.

And there's also Wikimedia Commons Atlas of the World, where you can find a range of maps per country (maps showing the regions, demographic data, municipalities, historical maps, satellite maps...). Most country articles have a link to the Wikimedia Atlas of that country in their External Links section (bottom of the page). Prevalence 20:57, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean by "if you click the icon in front of them, you get an interactive map". One of my pet peeves is that the maps in articles about towns and cities aren't zoomable. In the article on London, for example, there's a map of the UK in the infobox showing the location of London with a red dot. I would expect the red dot to remain in place when I click on the map itself, but it doesn't - it just disappears. I know this is the way these maps work - the red dot is not actually part of the map, it's overlaid on it somehow. --Viennese Waltz 07:59, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

When the coordinates are displayed in the title, which is done in desktop view only, clicking on the icon between the text "Coordinates:" and the coordinates themselves opens a movable and zoomable OpenStreetMap map, while clicking on the coordinates opens a GeoHack page. Isn't that enough of a service for a user's practical purposes?  --Lambiam 08:49, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Hmm, thanks - I'd never noticed that icon. I still wish the red dot remained visible when one clicks on the actual map displayed in the infobox, though. --Viennese Waltz 10:26, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

I'd never noticed that the icon did something different, either. I thought it just linked to GeoHack, like the coordinates do. Clicking the coordinates shows a different interactive map. Why do we have two different ones? Neither map shows the boundaries of Antwerp Province.  Card Zero  (talk) 16:58, 2 June 2023 (UTC)