We've got more in common than you realise, lox. :)

I was born and raised in America, but have been living in England for 18 years. I went to university in Leicester and lived in Leicestershire for about the same period of time as you, and I worked in Leicester with many culturally diverse communities.

Two of my jobs involved bringing arts projects into Leicester schools and community groups. I worked with schools from Highfields to the Saff, and with African Caribbean community organisations, Bangladeshi women's organisations...oh all sorts really. I even ran Bob Marley Day for a couple of years, in partnership with the African Caribbean Centre.

I do understand that white English people sometimes feel disenfranchised as a result of the politics of nationalism which are an overhang from the 1980s. However, I have very mixed views about this. Let me stress that i think positive representations of English culture are wonderful, and exciting, and absolutely vital. What concerns me is the undercurrent of suspicion about foreigners and immigrants undermining English culture, which goes hand in hand with the concept that "the English are not allowed to talk about their own culture anymore." I believe that most of this stuff is witch-hunt nnonsense whipped up to sell certain newspapers, as I have pointed out exhaustively in these threads.

So, for what it's worth, my observations go something like this: there is no one stopping anyone from talking about England and its culture in positive and uplifting ways. Where it gets worrying is if that vision begins to exclude more recent emigrants to England as somehow "other", and not an equal part of the society we currently live in (which is still, let's not forget, over 90% white). Sometimes anecdotal stories give people quite a skewed vision of the world they're living in.

There is sometimes a perception that funding cannot be had for folk music and dance projects which deal more or less exclusively with celebrating English culture, and that preferece is given to anything which celebrates cultural diversity. Again, in my experience this is untrue. Whether it was true at one time i cannot say, but it has not been my experience; I got £30k from the arts council over 2 years to nmanage projects specifically bringing English music and dance into schools.

Most of us who object to these misleading statements, such as "English people are not allowed to talk about Englishness" are worried about the underlying political connotations and agenda behind them. Why? Because it's the starting point for many of the arguments pedalled by the BNP. No one would deny that the political fallout from the 80s has made nationalism a delicate subject, and probably led to a level of under-representation of English culture as a response to the nastier side of nationalism. But I think that that under-representation has to be addressed carefully, and positively, in a spirit of unity rather than division.

And finally, my own perspective: well, talking from the perspective, once again, of working in folk, I have never encountered a resistance from the community or funders to English artforms. But I believe that all the cultures in Britain today have equal validity; my concern in developing the projects I did was to ensure that English culture was represented - not in a position of primacy, but as a vital part of the mix. And I think that probably sums up my position generally.