Roots or Family Connections in...
This is a useful expression. Taking India as an example, some people in Britain came here from India
in the past few years (not many, actually); some people have been here forty years, others (almost everyone under the age of 25) were
born here. In this mixture some have Indian passports, most have British passports and most know no other home other than Britain.
They are British, but they have roots or family connections in India.
Ethnic Minorities
This is a funny phrase because it's often
used in quite a vague way. Actually, you will find that people often use it when they mean black and Asian people, though ethnic has
nothing to do with colour. The Irish in Britain are a minority ethnic group. You could say Welsh people are an ethnic group.
Muslim,
Sikh, Hindu, etc.
Sometimes a person's religion is more important to them than their family's roots, so it is sometimes better to
describe them as a Sikh (for example) than as Indian.
Words which people don't like much
Coloured
An
old-fashioned word which seems to want to avoid saying 'black'. White people are often more comfortable with it than, say, 'black
......'
Immigrant
This simply means someone who has moved their home from one country to another. It is often disliked because
most of Britain's black and Asian people are not immigrants, they were born here. British people who moved their homes from here to
somewhere else (like Australia, America, India or Africa) were usually called 'settlers'. Funny that.
Paki, Chinky
Sometimes
people use these words as a shortened form of the full word, as an abbreviation. Pakistanis and Chinese people hate it. More often,
Paki is used on purpose as a general, insulting word for anyone with Pakistani, Indian or Bangladeshi roots, and then it's just as
insulting as the range of other words which most people know (so there's no need to spell them out here).
*The above text was taken from the Britkid website.
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