Ethnic Minorities, Citizenship and Education

Abstract

Nations are political units, created by governments of particular territories and peoples, but an important part of nation building involves laying claim to a unique national identity (Smith, 1986). Claim to a national identity is usually based on the assertion of a common ancestry and a shared history and is often accompanied by the exclusion of ‘others’, who have been conquered, colonized or otherwise subordinated. Debates over ‘who belongs’ to a particular nation with a national identity and citizenship rights are not purely theoretical. People are prepared to die in pursuit of their claims to be recognized as citizens of particular territories, and national majorities are prepared to use all strategies, including violence, in attempts to exclude minorities from citizenship rights. The question as to how far membership of a British national identity with full citizenship rights will ever be fully offered to those of ‘non-white’ ethnic backgrounds in Britain is still an open one1.Migrants of African, Caribbean and Asian origin and their descendants still have a struggle to exercise their political, civil and social citizenship rights. The white majority still seems determined to reject non-whites as equal citizens within the British nation, and the view of black British scholars is that a ‘black British’ or ‘Asian British’ identity is still not part of an acceptable image of post-imperial Britain (Gilroy, 1987, Goulbourne, 1989).