Ethnicity

Ethnicity and identity are closely aligned in popular and academic discussions. In fact, many often use the term ethnicity as a way to identify how individuals are grouped or group themselves according to some shared national or regional heritage, religion, class, language, or culture. In other words, ethnicity generally refers to a community or group of people who share some form of “kinship” with each other that identifies them as different from (to varying degrees) other communities within a particular region, city, or nation. It remains a way to differentiate one group from another for political, cultural, social, class, or racial reasons.

Sometimes ethnicity is confused, and actually used synonymously, with race. That is, in everyday discussions of identity, one's ethnicity can be thought to refer to his or her race. For example, within the United States, the common assumption remains that to identify as Black (race) automatically means that one is to be identified as being African American (ethnicity); however, Caribbean Americans of African descent might identify themselves as being Black but not African American because of a difference in national origins (Jamaican, Guyanese, Trinidadian, Barbadian), history, or cultural heritage (music, food, dance, etc.). Or someone might be referred to as White but identifies himself or herself as Italian American, Polish American, or Russian American.

How the borders of an ethnic group are determined—who belongs to, or who should be classified as belonging to, a particular group—has been the subject of much debate, especially when it underlies such issues as migration, immigration, diversity, and multiculturalism, racial and postracial identity, and citizenship. These debates often arise (and have arisen) in different ways in the media, as well as in academic and government institutions.