Distinguishing between Race
and Ethnicity
Race and ethnicity are sometimes used interchangeably, but actually they are based
on two different assumptions. Racedepends on an assumption of biological distinc-
tion. You can be Black or White and live in any country in the world, have any reli-
gion, and speak any language. All that matters is your skin color and whatever other
physical trait counts. However, ethnicitydepends on an assumption of cultural dis-
tinction. You can belong to any race and have a Swedish ethnicity—if you speak
Swedish at home, attend the Swedish Lutheran Church, eat lutefisk (cod soaked in
lye and served with bacon fat), and celebrate St. Lucia’s Day on December 13 by danc-
ing with lit candles on your head, as many do in Sweden.
Or if you do none of those things at all. Few Swedish American students at under-
graduate colleges today eat lutefisk or wear crowns of candles! There are likely few,
if any, cultural differences between Swedish students and everyone else on campus.
In fact, you’d probably never know they are Swedish, except for last names like
“Swenson” and a few Swedish flags on dorm room walls. Their Swedish ethnicity
resided entirely in how their ancestors might have lived.
Like race, ethnicity has no basis in any empirical fact.
Yet race and ethnicity are the single most predictive factors in determining a
person’s eventual social position. Race and ethnicity can be used to predict how you
vote, whom you will marry, and what sort of job you will have when you graduate
from college. Race and ethnicity can predict your attitudes on birth control, your musi-
cal tastes, and whether or not you go to church. They can even be used to predict
what church you go to! In spite of repeated, extensive attempts at racial integration,
Americans tend to live in segregated neighborhoods, go to segregated churches, make
friends almost entirely within their own race or ethnic group, and date almost entirely
within their own race or ethnic group. (There’s an old joke among Protestant clergy
that the most segregated time in American history is 10 a.m. every Sunday.)
Students often say they are amazed at how race and ethnicity are experienced in
class. Students may sit anywhere they wish, but by the third day of the semester the
African American, White, and Hispanic groups are as strictly segregated as if they
had been assigned that way. If forced to integrate, they will separate again as soon as
they are divided into small discussion groups. Why?
How can a category be nothing and so obviously something, at the same time?244 CHAPTER 8RACE AND ETHNICITYpeople. Being from different races is often a primary marker of structured social inequality
and a justification for discrimination. Race is among the foremost predictors of your experi-
ence in society.
As with class, gender, age, and ethnicity, race is a foundation of identity and a basis forsocial inequality.