End of Summer Reflections: The World Cup and English Identity
It’s been sometime since the World Cup final in Russia and discussions about the England team in the press and among wider society have now reduced to a slow simmer. It seems fitting that now the smoke has cleared someone can provide an analysis of the England team and the World Cup and its possible implications on English identity, as whether or not football is panem et circenses as some may say, it’s symbolism and…
A Blue Eyed Caucasian
So now we know that “the first Brits were black” (or so say some headlines). No doubt we have all seen the reports of the DNA analysis of “Cheddar Man” and the reconstruction of his appearance proving, with a three to one degree of probability, that he was dark skinned. The glee of the usual suspects does not need to be imagined with quotes such as “the multi-racial roots of the first Briton” and “we…
Cheddar Man – ‘Whiteness’, a Matter of Race, Not a Matter of Colour!
The mass media have over the past week or so, been celebrating the apparent ‘discovery’ that the ‘first modern Briton’, had blue eyes and “dark skin”, and not simply, ‘dark skin’, but “dark to black” skin colour, such that “if he was alive today he would be regarded as black’. This allegedly ‘ground-breaking’ revelation comes as a result of the DNA analysis of the skeleton of ‘Cheddar Man’, the largely complete skeleton of a man…