‘Ethnicity’ plays a major role in many people’s lives. It can often have a positive influence, providing us with a sense of belonging and identity and helping us to understand who we are and where we came from. However it can also play a much more negative role in creating and/or sustaining divisions between groups of people that can result in prejudice and discrimination and also, at times, conflicts and wars.

The survey on this website – Like Me, Like You – provides a unique opportunity to see what influence ethnicity has on children’s attitudes towards others and whether children from different parts of the country have different ideas. To complement the survey, this brief essay explains what ‘ethnicity’ is, what the research evidence to date can tell us about the influence it has on children’s attitudes and identities, and what parents can do to help their children develop positive attitudes towards ethnic diversity.

What is ‘ethnicity’?
While there is much debate and disagreement about the concept, ‘ethnicity’ is generally understood as representing a shared sense of identity and history. An ethnic group is therefore a group of people who see themselves as being distinctive in some way from others and of having a common heritage or background. What makes an ethnic group different from others will vary from one group to the next. For some it can be skin colour while for others it can be nationality, religion, language or shared cultural traditions. In many cases it is actually a combination of two or more of these.

In all cases it is important to realize that there is nothing natural nor inevitable about ethnicity. Ethnic identities will develop and change over time. What emerges as an important way for people to organize themselves in one period, whether that be skin colour or religion, may turn out to have little significance in another. Particular ethnic groups therefore tend to emerge and change over time as a consequence of particular social and political developments.

There are two common misconceptions about ethnicity. Firstly, we tend to think of ethnicity in Britain as being mainly about ‘race’ and skin colour. However, there are many ethnic groups that are not distinguished primarily in terms of skin colour. These include, for example, groups defined mainly in terms of religion (i.e. Jewish people or Muslim people) or nationality (i.e. Scottish, Welsh, or Irish people). Moreover, if we look at Northern Ireland for example then we find two main ethnic groups defined by religion – Protestants and Catholics – each tending to see themselves as sharing different cultural and political traditions.

The second misconception concerning ethnicity is that it relates solely to minority groups. This is most commonly seen when we talk, for example, of ‘ethnic jewellery’ or ‘ethnic art’. However, the fact is that we all have an ethnic identity or identities. Being ‘White’, for example, is as much of an ethnic identity as being ‘Black’ or ‘Asian’. The problem is that because White people are the majority in Britain then their ethnic identity is often simply taken for granted and regarded as ‘the norm’ and thus is rarely questioned.

Similar arguments are true in Britain in relation to the English in comparison with the Welsh or Scottish. It is because of this that it has always been that much harder to pin down what it means to be ‘White’ or to be ‘English’. Interestingly, and in both cases, because they are hard to define and because both ethnic identities constitute the majority then we often find slippages in people’s descriptions where ‘being British’ becomes associated with ‘being White’ and/or ‘being English’.

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Content last updated: 29/12/2004

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