race and ethnicity
Ancestry and background
Race and ethnicity are related but distinct ways of categorizing human groups.
Race typically refers to physical characteristics like skin color, hair texture, and facial features—categories that are socially constructed rather than biologically meaningful.
Ethnicity refers to shared cultural heritage: language, religion, customs, and ancestry.
A person might be racially Black and ethnically Jamaican, or racially white and ethnically Italian.
The terms often overlap and blur, especially in everyday speech.
What race and ethnicity should I put on this form?
- geneticsScience of hereditary transmission
- heritageInherited cultural legacy
- cultural heritageInherited collective traditions
- privilegeExclusive right or benefit
- model minorityRacialized success stereotype
hair texture · phenotype · facial features · colonialism · traditions · civil rights · migration · melting pot · apartheid · colorism · diaspora · skin color · discrimination · tribal affiliation · folklore · ancestry · segregation · bloodlines
race and ethnicitycitizenship
Status as state member
social class · socioeconomic status · civic identity · character · personality
race and ethnicityindividuality
Unique personal character
personal identity · selfhood · personality · personal history
race and ethnicitycommon humanity
Shared nature of people
colorblindness · individualism · race-blindness · universalism · cosmopolitanism
race, ethnicity, raced, racing, racers, racial, racially, racist, racism