Compare and Contrast Essay on Race and Ethnicity

Along with population on our planet Earth is growing increasingly as well as becoming more diverse, the terms such as ethnicity and race are thrown around all the time. Many people tend to think of race and ethnicity as one and the same. How is race distinct from ethnicity? What are the differences and similarities of those two? How can we make sure the terms are used in a proper way? This article can help you to define those two. Often, the words are used interchangeably as they have some similarities,- thus members of the public remain unclear about the meaning of these two terms. Therefore, very few of us accurately describe the difference between ethnicity and race, simply because we tend to lump them into the same definition. While the dictionary can represent each of these words to be highly similar, there are differences. Like the difference between gender and sex, or culture and society, the difference between race and ethnicity is a tricky one. Let’s start with definition of those two terms and proceed further to the differences and similarities between them. What Is Race? In biology, races are genetically distinct populations within the same species. It can include skin color, skin tone, eye and hair color, as well as a tendency toward developing certain diseases. It is not something that can be changed or disguised. Race does not have customs or globally learned behavior. Race can be used to describe other elements of biological and regional differences. Race generally refers to broad groupings of humanity, especially the ones associated with an origin in one particular hemisphere, continent, or subcontinent. Racial categories result from a shared genealogy due to geographical isolation. In the modern world this isolation has been broken down and racial groups have mixed. There are somewhere between three and seven races—its impossible to say for sure, because the process of lumping people together like this is arbitrary and not at all objective. Racial prejudice remains a continuing problem throughout the world. However, there are fewer race-based conflicts in the 21st century than in the past. For example, the conflict between white and African-American people in the U.S., especially during the civil rights movement. What Is Ethnicity? Ethnicity, on the other hand, is the word used to describe the cultural identity of a person. These identities can include language, religion, nationality, ancestry, dress, and customs. Some ethnic groups also share linguistic traits, while others share a common group history but not a common language or religion. The members of a particular ethnicity tend to identify with each other based on these shared cultural traits. However, the ethnic groups distinguish themselves differently from one time period to another. They typically seek to define themselves but also are defined by the stereotypes of dominant groups. At one time it was easy to tell one’s ethnicity, but as the global conglomeration offered more choice and change (as well as borrowing styles and ideas from other cultures), it has become impossible to identify ethnicity based solely on distinctive features. Ethnicity is a narrower category and more monolithic. Many ethnic groups share the same language, traditional religion, a homeland, and other common aspects of culture. Ethnicity gives us room to change because we can reject our own and embrace another. You can move from one region to another and assimilate your beliefs, actions and customs to identify with that ethnic orientation. Such changes in some cases provoke people to the conflicts (sometimes such conflicts have even an ethnic nationalism background). Thus, we can see the examples of brutal conflicts took place often between ethnic groups (which have existed throughout history) across the world. For example, the conflict between Tamil and Sinhalese populations in Sri Lanka, or the Hutu and Tutsi people in Rwanda. Difference Between Race And Ethnicity One example of the difference between these two terms is by examining people who share the same ethnicity. Two people can identify their ethnicity as American, yet their races may be black and white. Additionally, a person born of Asian descent who grew up in Germany may identify racially as Asian and ethnically as German. People who share the same race may also have distinct ethnicities. For example, people identifying as white may have German, Irish, or British ethnicity. Examples of Race And Ethnicity Such variations of self-identification of ethnicity can be quite confusing. If we look to the definition of 3 terms- race, ethnicity and culture form the biological perspective, we can come up with the following: Race is the inheritance of your DNA Culture is the social/religious milieu you grow up in. Ethnicity is the branch of the race that your DNA occupies. To provide with the example for the above, the differences between those terms can be explained as next: Race = Mongolian Culture = Semi nomadic and pastoral Ethnicity = Scotch-Irish Ethnic and racial designations often do overlap so these designations can become quite complex. We can define those two terms as following: race is the macro-category for people with different skin color, and ethnicity refer to their micro-category, the real cultural, national, or tribal identity of the person. To sum up, race refers to the concept of dividing people into populations or groups on the basis of various sets of physical characteristics (which usually result from genetic ancestry). Ethnicity can be defined as a matter of identity and ancestry of people presumably sharing a common experience and culture. Understanding their distinct significance is increasingly important, particularly because the diversity in the world is continuing to grow.