Exploring ethnicity: understanding the difference between ethnicity and race
Back to Topic
Click to Print
Useful Websites
Glossary Term Selection
Understanding the difference: race vs. ethnicity
When you’re chatting with friends, scrolling through social media, or even filling out forms for school or sports, you might come across the terms ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity.’ Although a lot of people use them interchangeably, they’re not the same thing. Each term has its own unique meaning and significance. To make sense of it all, let’s break down what race and ethnicity mean and how they affect our understanding of identity and culture.
What is race?
Imagine you’re looking at a rainbow. You see different colours, right? In a basic sense, race is like those colours – it’s a way humans have classified each other based on physical characteristics, like skin colour, eye shape, and hair texture. Societies created categories of race, predominantly to distinguish people by their outward features. But, unlike the distinct colours of a rainbow that you can clearly see, race is not scientifically defined by biology. Instead, it’s a social concep...
Want to see the rest of this article?
Would you like to see the rest of this article and all the other benefits that Issues Online can provide with?
- Useful related articles
- Video and multimedia references
- Statistical information and reference material
- Glossary of terms
- Key Facts and figures
- Related assignments
- Resource material and websites
