Self defined ethnicity is unhelpful

EDITOR,—Kwame McKenzie and N S Crowcroft's editorial and recommendations on describing race, ethnicity, and culture are an important contribution to the debate on ethnic classification.1 2 While the authors discuss the complexities associated with ethnic classification of various non-white British groups, their recommendations fail to acknowledge the similar difficulties in describing what could be referred to as the indigenous population (that is, those who have been traditionally termed white). There is an implicit assumption in much of the work on inter-ethnic differences that …