Ledbury Portal Community Forum

Herefordshire Council wants me to fill in an online form so they can evaluate my ethnicity.
They want to know what colour my skin is (I mean they want to know what colour I think my skin is, because although I am white I am not really white am I more of a greeny bluey magnolia pink (so I'm told), I am of course politically white - white and black here not being colours at all, but political markers.)
They also think they need to know my nationality to assess my ethnicity. Now remember in Old Blighty your nationality is your father’s nationality not the country you were born in (Mrs Thatcher saw to that so this isn't geographical placement - you can be born in Britain raised as British but still be a South African, unless a sporting interest dictates otherwise, Messrs Peterson and Trott.) 
The council is equally concerned about an unencompassing  geographical aspect – Am I Caribbean or Asian or African it would like to know but not European, American or Australian – for some reason that doesn’t fit their peculiar picture of ethnicity.
So by your colour, nationality and geographical origin the council will pigeonhole you into a desirable (unnegotiated) ethnic group.
How handy is that?
To answer that one needs to consider what ethnicity actually is. Is it really some bizarre mix of colour, continent and nationality invented by the authorities with no basis in science. Is this merely a redressed biblical version of an outmoded and dangerous unscientific notion of race?
When we speak of ethnicity we speak of culturally recognized markers that point to difference – ethnic food, ethnic music, ethnic clothing and jewellery and ethnic art or dance or even ethnic colours. The way we use and talk of ethnicity points to something that we think is not us - it is something different, something other, something alien. We do not see ourselves as ethnic. Ethnic is not fish and chips, not binge drinking, not punk rock and not bowler hats and stiff upper lips - those things we consider as 'ours', as English and not ethnic.
Going back four hundred years when Europeans (and Africans and Asians) were exploring the world the European explorers felt the need to distinguish themselves from the people they encountered and this was easily done through their religion and sense of superiority. 'They' were natives and heathens and 'we' were civilized and Christian.
However, this dichotomy became problematic when we encountered the Far East and discovered people who 'we' recognized as being more civilized than 'we' were. The Orient was born and labelled and to distinguish ourselves we became occidentals –West had met East and the difference formalized in language.
Another Us and Them was to form with our European neighbours – France, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands – they and the rest of the Europe are the Continent and 'we' remain isolated Islanders despite Common Markets and European Federalism - a notion that remains strong to this day.
The irrationality of rationality of the C20th saw this fixation of otherness draw to its inevitable conclusion with the Nazi’s final solution – the Jews and the gypsies were not Aryan and therefore had to be exterminated. And this wasn’t the only ethnic cleansing suffered in the C20th.
Now we are still at war - an Us and Them war (what other sort can there be?) disguised as a war on terror or a war for resources or a war of ideology – the one that replaced the cold war.
Us and Them is just primitive white and black thinking – However, our means of identifying ourselves by who we are not does not stop there. Our accents identify us - 'we' don’t have a brummie accent. Ancient British tribes go back a long way – Anglia, Sussex, Northumberland and Mercia and our regional dialects still speak us and identify us. Even more locally and we are defined by not being from the other side of the (Malvern) Hills and not from the Forest (of Dean) In fact we’re not from Bosbury or Bromsberrow or Marcle and more lately not from New Mills. Or are we? 
We have friends and family in these places and we visit and do business with these places and people. We take on and enjoy the music, food and art from these other places. 
The notion of other (by race and ethnicity) can only logically implode our identity to that of mere self – to alienation and isolation (I is me and everybody else is not me) while a celebration of difference and tolerance of others leads to an explosion of possibilities and diversity that we enjoy through our choices of consumption.
In the C21st our identity is not prescribed by outdated notions of nationality and national borders, which in any case are undermined by political super states, international travel and business, the Internet and global communications. Our identity is self-determined by what we consume, not by what we look like – curries, reggae, lager and bollywood become our cultural markers.
This preponderance by the council to pigeonhole us does nothing more than reinforce unwelcome notions of otherness of race and ethnicity – both terms invented to describe ourselves by what we think we are not, while ignoring and eluding our shared relationships, languages, culture, ethics and values.   
Why is the council not interested in my Europeaness – Am I Gallic, Slavic, Latin or Nordic – they don’t seem at all bothered about that.
Neither is the Council interested in my Britishness – am I Scottish,  English, Cornish, Manx or even Welsh. Ah Welsh -  surely as a Herefordian if there was one marker I would chose to say "hey that’s not me" it would be Welsh. Culturally I’m more French, Turkish or Thai than I am Welsh. But the council doesn't recognise this celtic ethnicity. 
And what of future questions this investigative Council will want to ask me. Is my hair red? Am I fat? Am I gay? Am I thick? Do I wear glasses? Am I atheist? Am I introvert? Am I colour blind?
The one thing we do know is that rather than our Council being colour blind, our council has a preoccupation and tendency towards colour hyper-sensitivity that is unhelpful, unwanted and divisive in a world that gets closer and less heterogenous every day.
This council's questionaire only reinforces notions of difference by demanding we fulfill a dreamed-up imagination of ethnicity.