Question

I had a question about ethnicity. I'm writing a paper and am a bit confused on the word ethnicity. For example if a person is half asian and half white with some european ancestry what would you consider their ethnicity to be? And how does that differ from race?

Answer 1

Ethnicity is about the origin of one's ancestry. Ancestry must be at least 3-4 generation above . It is different from nationality . One more important point to note is that ethnicity is about origin in particular geographical reason . It does not take into account the language or culture.

Coming to your question , ethnicity need not be single. Most of the person have multiple ethnicity like 6 generation was Asian , 4th settled in Us and my generation is UK. So if asked ethnicity I will answer my ethnicity is Asian and American. In census , there is multiple columns to ethnicity that certify it that there can be multiple ethnicity and you need not necessarily choose one.

Race is determined biologically and depends on personal characteristics of individual while ethnicity is determined sociologically and is depends on ancestor origin and not on personal characteristics.

Race is unitary , meaning one can be either black or white or brown while ethnicity can be multiple eg Spanish and French and Asian for same person.