What's the difference between race and ethnicity?

By Emma Bryce - Live Science Contributor February 08, 2020

This question reveals something much deeper about the ways we understand — and
misunderstand — race.If someone asked you to describe your identity to them, where
would you begin? Would it come down to your skin color or your nationality? What
about the language you speak, your religion, your cultural traditions or your
family's ancestry?

This bewildering question often pushes people to separate their identities into two
parts: race versus ethnicity. But what do these two terms actually mean, and what's
the difference between race and ethnicity in the first place?
These words are often used interchangeably, but technically, they're defined as
separate things. "'Race' and 'ethnicity' have been and continue to be used as ways
to describe human diversity," said Nina Jablonski, an anthropologist and
palaeobiologist at The Pennsylvania State University, who is known for her research
into the evolution of human skin color. "Race is understood by most people as a
mixture of physical, behavioral and cultural attributes. Ethnicity recognizes
differences between people mostly on the basis of language and shared culture." In
other words, race is often perceived as something that's inherent in our biology,
and therefore inherited across generations. Ethnicity, on the other hand, is
typically understood as something we acquire, or self-ascribe, based on factors
like where we live or the culture we share with others.

But just as soon as we've outlined these definitions, we're going to dismantle the
very foundations on which they're built. That's because the question of race versus
ethnicity actually exposes major and persistent flaws in how we define these two
traits, flaws that — especially when it comes to race — have given them an outsized
social impact on human history.

The basis of "races"

The idea of "race" originated from anthropologists and philosophers in the 18th
century, who used geographical location and phenotypic traits like skin color to
place people into different racial groupings. That not only formed the notion that
there are separate racial "types" but also fueled the idea that these differences
had a biological basis.

That flawed principle laid the groundwork for the belief that some races were
superior to others — creating global power imbalances that benefited white
Europeans over other groups, in the form of the slave trade and colonialism. "We
can't understand race and racism outside of the context of history, and more
importantly economics. Because the driver of the triangular trade [which included
slavery] was capitalism, and the accumulation of wealth," said Jayne O.
Ifekwunigwe, a medical anthropologist at the Center on Genomics, Race, Identity,
Difference (GRID) at the Social Science Research Institute (SSRI), Duke University.
She is also the associate director of engagement for the Center on Truth, Racial
Healing & Transformation (TRHT) at Duke. The center is part of a movement across
the United States whose members lead events and discussions with the public to
challenge historic and present-day racism.

The effects of this history prevail today — even in current definitions of race,
where there's still an underlying assumption that traits like skin color or hair
texture have biological, genetic underpinnings that are completely unique to
different racial groups. Yet, the scientific basis for that premise simply isn't
there.

"If you take a group of 1,000 people from the recognized 'races' of modern people,
you will find a lot of variation within each group," Jablonski told Live Science.
But, she explained, "the amount of genetic variation within any of these groups is
greater than the average difference between any two [racial] groups." What's more,
"there are no genes that are unique to any particular 'race,'" she said.

Related: What are genes?

In other words, if you compare the genomes of people from different parts of the
world, there are no genetic variants that occur in all members of one racial group
but not in another. This conclusion has been reached in many different studies.
Europeans and Asians, for instance, share almost the same set of genetic
variations. As Jablonski described earlier, the racial groupings we have invented
are actually genetically more similar to each other than they are different —
meaning there's no way to definitively separate people into races according to
their biology.

Jablonski's own work on skin color demonstrates this. "Our research has revealed
that the same or similar skin colors — both light and dark — have evolved multiple
times under similar solar conditions in our history," she said. "A classification
of people based on skin color would yield an interesting grouping of people based
on the exposure of the ancestors to similar levels of solar radiation. In other
words, it would be nonsense." What she means is that as a tool for putting people
into distinct racial categories, skin color — which evolved along a spectrum —
encompasses so much variation within different skin color "groupings" that it's
basically useless.

It's true that we do routinely identify each other's race as "black," "white" or
"Asian," based on visual cues. But crucially, those are values that humans have
chosen to ascribe to each other or themselves. The problem occurs when we conflate
this social habit with scientific truth — because there is nothing in individuals'
genomes that could be used to separate them along such clear racial lines.

In short, variations in human appearance don't equate to genetic difference. "Races

were created by naturalists and philosophers of the 18th century. They are not
naturally occurring groups," Jablonski emphasized.

Where ethnicity comes in

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This also exposes the major distinction between race and ethnicity: While race is
ascribed to individuals on the basis of physical traits, ethnicity is more
frequently chosen by the individual. And, because it encompasses everything from
language, to nationality, culture and religion, it can enable people to take on
several identities. Someone might choose to identify themselves as Asian American,
British Somali or an Ashkenazi Jew, for instance, drawing on different aspects of
their ascribed racial identity, culture, ancestry and religion.

Ethnicity has been used to oppress different groups, as occurred during the
Holocaust, or within interethnic conflict of the Rwandan genocide, where ethnicity
was used to justify mass killings. Yet, ethnicity can also be a boon for people who
feel like they're siloed into one racial group or another, because it offers a
degree of agency, Ifekwunigwe said. "That's where this ethnicity question becomes
really interesting, because it does provide people with access to multiplicity,"
she said. (That said, those multiple identities can also be difficult for people to
claim, such as in the case of multiraciality, which is often not officially
recognized.)

Related: What happened during the Holocaust?

Ethnicity and race are also irrevocably intertwined — not only because someone's
ascribed race can be part of their chosen ethnicity but also because of other
social factors. "If you have a minority position [in society], more often than not,
you're racialized before you’re allowed access to your ethnic identity,"
Ifekwunigwe said. "That's what happens when a lot of African immigrants come to the
United States and suddenly realize that while in their home countries, they were
Senegalese or Kenyan or Nigerian, they come to the U.S. — and they're black." Even
with a chosen ethnicity, "race is always lurking in the background," she said.

These kinds of problems explain why there's a growing push to recognize race, like
ethnicity, as a cultural and social construct — something that's a human invention,
not an objective reality.

Yet in reality, it's not quite so simple.

More than a social construct

Race and ethnicity may be largely abstract concepts, but that doesn't override
their very genuine, real-world influence. These constructs wield "immense power in
terms of how societies work," said Ifekwunigwe. Defining people by race,
especially, is ingrained in the way that societies are structured, how they
function and how they understand their citizens. Consider the fact that the U.S.
Census Bureau officially recognizes five distinct racial groups.

The legacy of racial categories has also shaped society in ways that have resulted
in vastly different socioeconomic realities for different groups. That's reflected,
for instance, in higher levels of poverty for minority groups, poorer access to
education and health care, and greater exposure to crime, environmental injustices
and other social ills. What's more, race is still used by some as the motivation
for continued discrimination against other groups that are deemed to be "inferior."

"It's not just that we have constructed these [racial] categories; we have
constructed these categories hierarchically," Ifekwunigwe said. "Understanding that
race is a social construct is just the beginning. It continues to determine
people's access to opportunity, privilege and also livelihood in many instances, if
we look at health outcomes," she said. One tangible example of health disparity
comes from the United States, where data shows that African American women are more
than twice as likely to die in childbirth compared with white women.

Perceptions of race even inform the way we construct our own identities — though
this isn't always a negative thing. A sense of racial identity in minority groups
can foster pride, mutual support and awareness. Even politically, using race to
gauge levels of inequality across a population can be informative, helping to
determine which groups need more support, because of the socioeconomic situation
they’re in. As the U.S. Census Bureau website explains, having data about people's
self-reported race "is critical in making policy decisions, particularly for civil
rights."

All this paints a complex picture, which might leave us pondering how we should
view the idea of race and ethnicity: Should we celebrate them, shun them or feel
indifferent? There are no easy answers. But one thing is clear: While both are
portrayed as a way to understand human diversity, in reality they also wield power
as agents of division that don't reflect any scientific truths.

What the science does show us is that across all the categories we humans construct
for ourselves, we share more in common than we don't. The real challenge for the
future will be to see that, instead of our "differences" alone.