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What do you think the difference is, do you believe there is a difference at all?

From what I understand, ethnicity is kinda sorta basically the same as race but usually more specific, unless it isn't… or something like that. Nationality is the countr(y/ies) that you were born and/or have lived in that dominate your identity.

Race is your color, nationality is where you live, ethnicity is where your great-grandparents lived.

They are all essentially social constructs, so their meaning changes considerably depending on the political and cultural context.

basically this

I wish we could get rid of the word race, ethnicity is a much more accurate word.

Breed is the most accurate term, but god forbid we acknowledge the fact that we're animals. There is no other term that could describe the individual physical differences between so many of the same exact species. That's what a breed is.

Race is DNA
Nationality is Location
Ethnicity is Family History

Well the way i see it

Race= Social Construct (seeing as though people who weren't considered white back in the day are now white, and people who are asian are not typically seen as, well, asian)

Nationality= What nation you belong to, you belong to or align with.

Ethnicity=DNA

Who wasn't considered white then but white now?
Ethnicity is defined as "a socially defined category of people who identify with each other based on common ancestral, social, cultural or national experience"
I think you have race and ethnicity backwards

Your homeland is based on either 'right to blood' (the nationalities of your parents) or 'right to soil' ( the country in which you were born in). Nationality is however often simplified and just a definition of your citizenship in a certain state.

Race is how Lisa puts it, a breed. Differing racial groups formed from thousands of years of travel and interbreeding. What we see now (Caucasian, Asians etc etc..) are the results of natural evolution and survival of the fittest.

Ethnicities are groups of people who share and have in common things such as heritage, culture, history, customs, creeds and religions sometimes regardless of race depending on the ethnicity in question.

@Triple and Ryumaru

I think all three of them are social constructs

Not to say that they are the same. I agree with the definitions between each one that Laika put forward

But aside from the genetic differences between different breeds of human (a.k.a race), I believe these things only exist because we've decided that they matter in our social interaction to one another

^^^^^^

exactly what i have been saying for years.
Race was a term used when people thought people from Africa were not the same as people from Britain or where ever else. But now we actually know the only difference is cultural differences.
It was more accurate 200+ years ago where people didn't travel much, mostly stayed in their own place, but know that humans are constantly moving around the world and mingling with people around the world… words like race and ethnicity are becoming less and less meaningful since their ancestry is more scattered.

I'm just waiting till we stop defining each other by meaningless term and just start calling each other human.

They exist whether or not people think they matter
Race is nothing but DNA so IDK how that can be social constructs
Ethnicity is a little of both, it being your families history and culture
Nationality is 100% social construct

You can't just denounce the legitimacy of these things because they are "social constructs" everything to do with human social interaction is a construct so it is pointless throwing around this term when it achieves no more than stating the obvious.

I don't understand why people are so meta on life when it comes to this subject. I agree completely with Ryu here…

Race is an existing and real differentiation between humans

Ethnicity is a combination of these two

Nationality is relatively modern in human history making it 100% construct

And on an interesting twist. Equality is incredibly new and is a definite social construct

back in the day italians, irish, jews, they weren't considered white. Many people thought that by the late 20th century that white people would become a minority due to the large influx on non WASP people. But eventually they were considered white. This same process can be seen now with Asian and Hispanics with many people considering them on the same level, if not already white.

To say all of them are social constructs is obviously wrong.

A differing amount of melanin in the skin isn't much of a difference, but it still is a difference.

Because understanding that they are only worth what we as people decide they are worth is the first step towards moving away from them.

Are you sure that wasn't ethnic prejudice? I think this is just a case of people equating Race and Ethnicity, which happens a lot. And how can people possibly think Asians are White? Mongoloids are one of the three main races. What, is it just Black and White and that's the only two races now?

^ colors. When the first immigrants arrived we based race purely on color. Italians weren't white, they're brown like the rest of the dirty immigrants. Asians weren't mongoloids, they're yellow. etc etc. Now we're transitioning from color to ethnicity when we say "race" so the whole concept is very confused by itself atm. I'm pretty sure nobody considers Asians white regardless though.

That's why I prefer breed, it can even account for regional/locale differences where race and even ethnicity stop at very general definitions. A northern Italian doesn't look anything like one from Sicily, for example, but they're both Caucasian Italians in terms of race and ethnicity.

idk, using the term breed seems kinda dehumanizing.

Huh, well I've never met an Italian (at least one who told me they were Italian) so I figured they were white skinned like most of Europe.

I'm 100% northern Italian. Look at me. I'm white as fuck.
This is a Sicilian woman:

So you can see why the southern Italians were not so easily welcomed into white society despite also being Caucasian.

{ idk, using the term breed seems kinda dehumanizing. }

Yeah, we're not a super special class of animal removed from the influence of nature, the mechanics that caused breeds instead of sub-species are the same for us as for the other animals that broke into them, why is that so hard for us to accept?

We could still use race if breeds bothers people, but the definitions would be literally the same.

most people from the Mediterranean tend to look like that. For the longest time i thought my Computer science teacher was Arab. Turns out he was Greek, it was the same with my Political science teacher, thought he was like from the Levant or north Africa. Turned out he was Spanish (as it turns out Spain Spanish sounds way different than America Spanish)

Yes we may be animals, but we are people. That's what separates us from animals.

I’m 100% northern Italian. Look at me. I’m white as fuck.
This is a Sicilian woman:

So you can see why the southern Italians were not so easily welcomed into white society despite also being Caucasian.

While the skin is definitely darker, personally I would still on site call her Caucasian, but I guess in the past, people were more touchy about what Starbucks flavor you were

This is why i think race is a dumb term, there is no real definition. The definition changes based on who you talk to.
Why say caucasian? why not just say white?

The definition doesn't really change, most people agree it's difference in DNA and physical traits, it's just the lines between races that people disagree with.
I said Caucasian cause it's the technical term and is separated from skin color.

Race and ethnicity used to be interchangeable but over the last century, discussion of "race" became sort entwined in the rhetoric of racial supremacy. Historically, not all discussion of "race" was used for exclusionary purposes. The scholars who constructed the idea of the Aryan race did so as a way of showing a shared heritage among Europeans, Persians, and Indians. Because of the latter implications of "Aryan" we now call this heritage the safer "Proto-Indo-European." If I were to say "race" nowadays, it would only be in allusion to such large, theoretical historical peoples. The common way of conceiving broad strokes of human population in the 19th century was to talk about "races": the Aryan race of India, Persia, and Europe; the Semitic race of the Arab world; the African race; the Asian race; and so on and so forth. Again, due to the development of racial supremacist though and the negativity heaped onto this theory after its creation, it has accumulated too much negative association to be used today.

"Ethnicity" is like race but on a smaller scale, more contingent on regional origin, physical characteristics, and shared language. For example, the Anglo-Saxon ethnicity consists of Teutons, Prussians, Britons, Celts, etc. The distinction was formed because those historical peoples began as a part of the same racial migrations and their languages share core grammatical and vocabulary elements; likewise, the Slavic ethnicity mainly populating Eastern Europe also shares a similar set of cultural and ethno-linguistic traits. In immigrant societies like USA and Canada, this distinction of ethnicity becomes more difficult to describe because the unifying factors of language and culture based on region are lost in favor of a constructed, relatively young national identity, thus the descriptor "white" used in those countries.

Nationality is a completely different descriptor from race and ethnicity, though qualification for nationality can be granted on the basis of race/ethnicity. Again, in "traditional" civilizations across the Afro-Eurasian megacontinent, your ancestral birthplace would dictate your nationality. In younger nations like the countries of the Americas, nationality is divorced from ethnicity, thus an ethnic Korean can be of Argentine nationality and an ethnic Somali can be of American nationality. Citizenship usually dictates nationality; unlike race/ethnicity, it is something that can be changed within a lifetime due to immigration and assimilation.

{ Yes we may be animals, but we are people. That’s what separates us from animals. }

Yes we may be animals, but we are whales. That's what separates us from animals.

I mean.

Wanna try a slightly more compelling argument?

>Race
A general categorization of people based on physical/genetic characteristics inherent to a large group.

>Nationality
A political and legal definition based on the country of one's birth/country one has lived in for an extended period of time.

>Ethnicity
A more specific categorization of people based on physical/genetic characteristics inherent to a smaller group.

that is a pretty compelling argument. People are capable of higher brain functions than most animals. That's why we tend to hold ourselves in higher regard. It makes sense too. An ant or a bird doesn't have hopes and dreams, they aren't capable of introspection, and any affection they may be capable of is nowhere near our level. That's what separates People from Beasts.

But lets try not to get to off topic.

{ People are capable of higher brain functions than most animals. }

We find more and more species every day with comparably functioning brains (you might have heard of rats, that's why we use them in literally every intelligence/brain experiment you can do in a lab). Our "intelligence" is not what allows us to have "hopes and dreams" (you want to talk about human social constructs, there's a couple [I specify human because we're not the only species with social constructs]).

We could start another thread, this is a way more interesting discussion.

> People are capable of higher brain functions than most animals
>That’s why we tend to hold ourselves in higher regard.

Right, its totally not because we are egotistical.
Even if we were the dumbest animals on the planet, we'd still see ourselves as better.

Laika's correct in that it's reductive to dismiss social constructs like race and nationality because those form the basis of very dangerous things like prejudice, identity, patriotism, etc.

One of the more complicating aspects of ethnicity is the fact that under the current world order (or lack of world order) many movements, mostly violent, conflate ethnicity and nationality by demanding independence on the basis of being a different ethno-religious-cultural-racial group than those in power. Considering the propensity for democidal regimes in certain parts of the world plagued by millennium-long ethnic/religious feuds, I don't really blame those who crave a state for their own people (Free Kurdistan, anyone?).

There's a pretty big consensus of IR specialists that ethnic conflict will be one of the most common forms of war in the future. I guess we can get pretty pissy about "social constructs".

Breed implys that our races and ethnicity were bred into existence by another outside force.
I'd prefer the term Ethnicity, it suits better.
>Race
social construct based off appearance and skin color traits shared by many different ethnic groups in a geographical area.
>Ethnicity
A group of people banded together by heritage, homelands, religion, traditions, beliefs, and customs.
>Nationality
Where you were born.

Personally, I think Americans value their ancestry a little too much. I can trace my family tree back to England and Lithuania. While they may be lovely countries, I don't feel any particular kinship to them. That connection was severed ages ago. Don't get me wrong, regional subcultures are healthy, e pluribus unum and whatnot, but national identity should take priority. However, I have no problem identifying myself as a dirty white boy!! (air guitar)