Black British identities: Looking beyond the data category
Categories: Research using linked data, Blogs
4 September 2026
This is the third and final blog in a short series by Maggie, Communications & Engagement Intern at ADR UK. Maggie explores the complexity of Black British identities, drawing on the history of the Windrush generation and her own experiences of being Black British. She considers what these histories and experiences can tell us about the way ethnicity is categorised in data, and why recognising diversity within broad ethnic groups matters for research. The reflections in this blog are Maggie's own and are intended to encourage thoughtful discussion around the complexities of race, ethnicity and ethnicity data.
Behind ethnicity data are real people, communities and lived experiences. Understanding this can help us recognise the diversity and intersections that exist within modern Britain, while also acknowledging both the contributions of communities that have historically been overlooked and the inequalities they have experienced.
The Windrush generation
The Windrush generation refers broadly to people from Caribbean countries who came to Britain between 1948 and 1971 under the 1948 British Nationality Act. The term comes from the HMT Empire Windrush, which arrived at Tilbury Docks in June 1948 and has become a symbol of this period of migration. Many arrived in the period following the Second World War and took on important work in sectors including healthcare, transport, manufacturing and other industries, laying the foundations for many public services, including the NHS.
The Windrush generation is now an important part of the story of Black British identity – although Black people had, of course, lived in and interacted with Britain for centuries before the arrival of the Empire Windrush. However, despite their contributions, as well as their qualifications and experience, many Black Caribbean migrants faced widespread racism, sexism and discrimination in employment, housing and wider society.
What can we learn from the Windrush scandal?
The Windrush scandal, a major political crisis that began to be fully recognised from 2017, demonstrated how administrative records, and the systems, policies and decisions built around them, can have profound consequences for people's lives. Members of the Windrush generation who had lived legally in the UK for decades were required to provide evidence of their immigration status, while government records that might have helped establish their status were incomplete or unavailable. Some lost jobs, homes and access to services, while others were detained or wrongly deported from the UK. In one case, Albert Thompson was denied cancer treatment by the NHS and was informed he would have to pay £54,000 unless he could provide the appropriate documentation. Some individuals affected died before receiving compensation, while others are still waiting to be compensated today. Labour MP David Lammy criticised the scandal in a parliamentary speech as "a national day of shame”.
This serves as an important reminder that administrative data is never simply information stored in a system. Decisions about what is recorded, retained and accepted as evidence – and how records are interpreted – can determine people's access to rights and services, including healthcare and benefits. Accurate and well-managed data can support fairer decision-making, help identify inequalities and ensure that people and communities are appropriately represented within administrative systems.
It also raises wider questions that are relevant when thinking about ethnicity and other demographic data: whose experiences are visible in administrative systems? What information might be missing? And what assumptions are made when data is used to make decisions about people and communities?
The experiences of the Windrush generation form one part of a much broader and more diverse history of Black people in Britain. Black British communities today encompass many different heritages, migration histories and experiences, raising another important question: what do we mean when we group people together as “Black British”, and what differences might that broad category conceal?
What does it mean to be Black British?
“Black British” is an umbrella term that can encompass people in Britain with a wide range of African, Caribbean and other Black heritages. As with any ethnicity label, however, not everyone who might be placed within this category will identify with it in the same way or use it at all.
Being Black British is a unique and diverse experience that I cannot universally describe. Intersections such as class, age, gender, sexuality, disability, religion, location and accessibility can all change the "Black British experience". For example, my experiences of womanhood have always been mediated by race, just as my experiences of Blackness have been shaped by gender.
When reading Action for Race Equality's Racial Terminology Project, I was particularly interested that some participants from minority ethnic backgrounds were uncomfortable identifying simply as “British”, in part because they felt the term was implicitly associated with being white. The project discusses identities such as British Pakistani and Black British, which can allow people to express both their heritage and their British identity. This raises interesting questions about who is seen as British, and how ideas of belonging and national identity can themselves be shaped by race and ethnicity.
In the 2021 Census, “Black Welsh” and “Asian Welsh” were added to the ethnic group question in Wales. Changes like this demonstrate how official categories themselves evolve in response to questions about identity, belonging and whether existing classifications adequately reflect the population.
These questions of identity and belonging also resonate with my own experiences. When I travel internationally, for example, my British passport may be the most relevant part of my identity. Yet at the same time, Britishness is still often associated with whiteness, despite Britain being home to people from many different ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
My family's relationship with Britain also did not begin with our arrival in the UK. Britain's colonial rule connected generations of people across countries including Nigeria to Britain, whether willingly or not. My own relationship with Britishness has therefore been shaped by this history as well as by my citizenship and experience of growing up in the UK.
Equally, because I was born and raised in the UK, some Nigerians may not see me as fully Nigerian. At different times and in different contexts, different aspects of my identity may therefore become more or less “significant”. This demonstrates why ethnicity cannot simply be reduced to nationality, race or place of birth. Identity is shaped both by how we understand ourselves and by how others perceive us.
Meanwhile, some people do not identify with the term “Black British” at all. They may question why they cannot simply be described as British without a racial label. For some, being Black British involves balancing multiple identities – sometimes with intersections that fit together, and at other times feeling in conflict. And others may prefer a more specific identity, potentially combining ethnicity with nationality rather than race, such as Somali British, Kenyan British or Nigerian British.
At the same time, “Black British” can be a meaningful collective identity. For me, the term remains important: it can provide a shared language through which Black people can challenge reductive stereotypes and assumptions. But that does not mean everyone within the category is a monolith with the same experiences or views. “Black” encompasses people with many different cultures, languages, nationalities, histories, opinions and lived experiences.
The meaning of racial and ethnic labels can also change between countries. If I moved to the United States, for example, although being Black, it could be debated whether I would be considered ethnically African American. While I share African heritage, I do not have the same historical and cultural experiences associated with African American identity. Black communities within Britain often encompass very different histories, nationalities and cultures, which is where important conversations concerning diasporic similarities and differences arise.
This is important when we think about ethnicity data. A broad category such as “Black” or “Black British” may be useful for identifying patterns and inequalities across a population, but it can also conceal meaningful differences within that population. More detailed ethnicity data, where appropriate, can help researchers explore these differences rather than assuming that everyone grouped within a broad category has the same experiences or outcomes.
However, greater detail is not automatically better. As I explored earlier in this blog series, researchers also need to consider whether categories reflect how people identify, whether there are enough people within groups to support meaningful analysis, how categories compare across datasets and over time, and how people's privacy is protected.
These tensions are important for researchers to keep in mind when working with ethnicity data. Categories cannot capture everything about an individual's identity or lived experience, but they can still be useful for exploring differences within and between groups when used thoughtfully.
Why representation matters in data
The way people's identities and experiences are recorded is crucial, whether through historical records, personal testimony or contemporary administrative data. And when ethnicity information is used in research, its value lies not simply in recording that different communities exist; it can help identify inequalities that might otherwise be obscured.
Using high-quality administrative data on ethnicity, researchers, organisations and policymakers can ask and answer important questions:
Are there differences between ethnic groups in access to resources and services?
Are policies or interventions having different effects across groups?
Where do disparities exist in areas such as healthcare, employment and education?
Are the experiences of particular communities being overlooked within broader population-level findings?
Disparities in maternal and infant health outcomes provide one example of why this matters. Research has repeatedly identified inequalities in maternal mortality and infant outcomes between ethnic groups in the UK, including poorer outcomes among Black women and babies. Black women have reported not being listened to when raising concerns and, in some cases, being stereotyped as having "tough skin" or being able to tolerate more pain.
Ethnicity data alone cannot explain why these inequalities exist. But by analysing ethnicity alongside relevant health, socioeconomic and service data, researchers can identify disparities, investigate the factors that may contribute to them, and evaluate whether interventions are helping to reduce them. Without sufficiently robust data, including reliable ethnicity variables, important differences in experiences and outcomes may be harder to identify, making it more difficult to develop targeted interventions and improve outcomes for certain groups, including Black mothers and babies.
When looking across examples such as the Windrush scandal and disparities in maternal and infant health outcomes, we can see how historical experiences, administrative systems and modern-day inequalities intersect, and how ethnicity data can help us better understand some of these patterns over time.
This is also why the way ethnicity data is collected and analysed is so important. As I have explored throughout this blog series, researchers need to think critically about the language and categories they use, whose identities are represented within them, who might be missing or hidden within broader groups, and what conclusions the data can reasonably support.
“Black British” can be a meaningful and empowering identity, but it cannot tell us everything about the people who identify with (or against) it. Behind that category are different nationalities, cultures, migration histories, generations and experiences, as well as identities shaped by gender, class, religion, disability and many other factors.
For researchers, the challenge is therefore not simply to collect and analyse more ethnicity data. It is to understand what the categories they use can and cannot tell them about the people represented within them, and to recognise the people, histories and experiences behind the numbers.
