A common misconception is that race and ethnicity are one and the same. However, in order to be truly anti-racist (see the article titled, What an anti-racist does), it is key that we understand the difference between the two.
Race:
The term race was founded in 1795 by an anthropologist named Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. Blumenbach used race as a way to categorize humans based on how they looked and where they were from. He divided all humans into five groups, which from an article in Discover magazine are: “...the Caucasian variety, for the light-skinned people of Europe and adjacent parts of Asia and Africa; the Mongolian variety, for most other inhabitants of Asia, including China and Japan; the Ethiopian variety, for the dark-skinned people of Africa; the American variety, for most native populations of the New World; and the Malay variety, for the Polynesians and Melanesians of the Pacific and the aborigines of Australia.” Blumenbach used these categories to discern which type of people he believed were better than others. White people, unsurprisingly, were thought to be the superior race. In today’s world, we still fight the idea that race has anything to do with mental, physical, or emotional capacity. Scientists have proven that we are all 99.9 percent alike no matter our skin color. This discovery proves that race is truly just a construct that was made up without any basis of science. Ken ham, co-author of one race one blood backed this discovery by saying, “for one point out the common ground of both evolutionist and creationist: the mapping of the human genome concluded that there is only one race, the human race.”
However, just because it is recognized now in science that race is just a construct, and not truly a defining factor between people, does not mean that racial discrimination does not exist. Racial discrimination is just as prevalent regardless of this scientific discovery and because of that, we as a people-specifically those of racial privilege- cannot pretend that the idea of the race doesn’t exist. I’ve heard many white people say that they don’t “see color” or that “race does not matter” to them, however, that is just another way in which you are undermining the experiences of people of color. By saying one doesn’t see race, one is are implying that racial discrimination does not matter or does not exist. This may be true for white people but for people of color, their race is very much a part of their identity regardless of whether or not it’s a social construct. As Ibram x. Kendi put it, “Imaging away the existence of races in a racist world is as conserving and harmful as imaging in away classes in a capitalist world-it allows the ruling races and classes to keep on ruling.”
Ethnicity:
Ethnicity refers to the social group that you belong to. Your ethnicity is based on many different key components such as culture, traditions, language, place of origin. A key point in understanding the difference between race and ethnicity is understanding that there may be more genetic differences within one said ethnic group than from one race to another. In his book, How To Be An Anti-Racist Ibram X. Kendi shared a clear example disproving the theory that races are genetically different from one and other. He wrote, “Africa’s residence 17th and 18th centuries did not look at the various ethnic groups around them and suddenly see them all as one people, as the same race, as African or Black. Africans involved in the slave trade did not believe they were selling their own people-they were usually selling people as different from them as the Europeans waiting on the coast.”
Although there can be differences between ethnicities, it is important to remember that those differences are not due to the color of the person's skin, but rather due to geography and social structures which all have a huge impact on a person's environment. Someone’s environment, or their cultural identity, can have a significant impact on a person. There are key differences, not racial, but cultural differences between someone who has grown up in a Mexican community vs a Caucasian one. Those non-genetic differences such as language, experiences, ways of thinking about the world, etc are defined by the word ethnicity. Ethnic groups are defined by a person's culture, religion, family, language, place of origin, and more. Many people may use ethnicity and race in their identity for example, one may identify as white racially and ethnically Jewish, or Asian racially and ethnically Chinese-American. As Kendi explained in How to Be an Antiracist, the most important part of understanding ethnicity and race is to make sure we are actively fighting every day against racial and ethnic discrimination.
“To be antiracist is to recognize the reality of biological equality, that skin color is as meaningless to our underlying humanity as the clothes we wear under that skin. To be antiracist is to recognize no such thing as White blood or Black diseases or natural Latinx athleticism. To be anti-racist is to also recognize the leaving, breathing reality of this living maraige which makes our skin colors more meaningful than our individuality. To be anti-racist is to focus on ending the racism that shapes the maragies, not to ignore the mariages that shape peoples’ lives.”
Ibram X. Kendi
Word art by Nate Simonson