mixed_biscuits

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Bien pensant English people are very enthusiastic about other people's ethnicities: oh, you're Armenian! How wonderful. You must be so glad to have such a heritage, they coo when finding out which part of 'foreign' someone is from; they are similarly enthusiastic about any foreign ethnic group's attempts to preserve their exclusive ethnic community and historical claims to land. But when it comes to the English ethnicity that foreigners perceive in them, they deny that they actually possess such a thing. How can this be?
 

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Bien pensant English people are very enthusiastic about other people's ethnicities: oh, you're Armenian! How wonderful. You must be so glad to have such a heritage, they coo when finding out which part of 'foreign' someone is from; they are similarly enthusiastic about any foreign ethnic group's attempts to preserve their exclusive ethnic community and historical claims to land. But when it comes to the English ethnicity that foreigners perceive in them, they deny that they actually possess such a thing. How can this be?

Orwell's often invoked along these lines:

"England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during ‘God save the King’ than of stealing from a poor box."​
I think you could probably say the same for America nowadays and not just England. A lot of people over there cringe at the national anthem being blasted before sporting events, etc.
 
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