Hugh Muir’s investigation of his genetic inheritance (When racists shout ‘Go home’, and you come from 15 places, what to do?, 1 January) prompts the important observation that we are not “identity parcels labelled from one destination, ready to be returned to sender”. However, the fact that DNA testing indicates several points of genetic connection does not mean that “there is a viable case that home could be a lot of places”, unless you consider home and identity to be some sort of mathematical percentage game. Neither does it invalidate a sense of belonging to any one place. It does, however, confound the assumptions of those who insist on seeing identity in essentialist terms, either ethno-nationally or racially.
What Muir’s being “settled but never quite cosy” more accurately identifies is the sense that for some of us, being born in Britain confers a sense of Britishness that can sometimes feel like an honorary status. Periodically, that feeling is exacerbated by immigration policy and by the intemperate debates it ignites. We are now experiencing one of those periods, as the hostility of rightwing populism is accompanied by a rise in hate crime(Racial and religious hate crime on UK public transport is growing, data shows, 2 January). Muir is therefore right to call for a more positive “conversation” before many more become like the man who “felt, for the first time, the need to watch his back”.
Paul McGilchrist
Cromer, Norfolk
