> He’s not saying the skin color is wrong. He’s saying it’s not ethnic British
It doesn't take much 4D-chess reading of his actual words to infer, I think correctly, that he's saying it's not ethnic British... And that's wrong. At least wrong for him (and wrong for the Brits, since he goes on to assert that "it's tough to blame the Brits for being pissed").
"I thought I might move there [London] one day.
That was then. Now, I wouldn't dream of it. London is no longer the city I was infatuated with in the late '90s and early 2000s. Chiefly because it's no longer full of native Brits."
... I mean, I'm having a real hard time finding a reading for those sentences that isn't "I was more comfortable when Britain was full of native Brits and I am not comfortable now." If I assume your assertion that he means ethnicity, not culture or citizenship-birth... What the hell, DHH? What is it about "non-ethnic Brits" that is giving you the heebie-jeebies?
> can be a Japanese citizen but I cannot be Japanese.
That's going to be a difference of definition. If I may, "I can be a Japanese citizen but I cannot be ethnically Japanese."
And whether that's true or not: this is perhaps a thing that Japanese people can have traditionally, or Danes. It would be the height of hypocrisy, given the Empire's history, for the Brits to do this, and DHH is swimming way outside his lane opining on how Britain should be or what makes him, a non-Brit, most comfortable in London.
Do you want to know when the Brits stopped "looking British?" Around the time Victoria crowned herself Empress of India, creating a country of about 28.9 million "ethnic Brits" (I'm going to speak loosely here, and my Irish and Welsh cousins will give me a proper thrashing for it later) and 250 million "ethnic Indians." And the fact India later gained its independence again has no bearing on the people who are Brits who look "non-ethnic" because of 90 years of British rule of a subcontinent. If DHH, or the British, or anyone want someone to blame for Britain suffering a "demographic nightmare" (whatever the hell that means)... They can probably blame the Widow of Windsor.
> Why is that?
Because some nations were expansionist and some were isolationist. Ethnic and national identity lack 1-to-1 overlap, and that matters more in some nations than others. I'm not in the business of telling the Japanese how they should see themselves (if I were, I would be making meaningful harumphing noises about the easiest possible way to curb their apparent birthrate crisis...). But DHH has put himself in the business of telling Brits how they should be seen, and in so doing he decided to wade into a conversation that makes him, yeah, the racist in the story.
He's free to walk it back any time he wants to stop causing controversy in the Ruby community so people can focus on the tech again.
> I'm Norwegian by the way and I belong to quite a small ethnic minority
Oh, you've opened quite a door. I want to guess but guessing feels rude so I will refrain. For what it's worth, every person I ever met while visiting Norway had a lot to be proud of (hell, waking up every day in that climate and giving death herself a middle finger is damn impressive to me!), so whoever is making you feel like you don't have a right to be proud of your heritage can probably pound sand.