Ask the Scholars

While race and ethnicity share an ideology of common ancestry, they differ in several ways. First of all, race is primarily unitary. You can only have one race, while you can claim multiple ethnic affiliations. You can identify ethnically as Irish and Polish, but you have to be essentially either black or white. The fundamental difference is that race is socially imposed and hierarchical. There is an inequality built into the system. Furthermore, you have no control over your race; it's ...

I think most people associate race with biology and ethnicity with culture. It's important to stress the culture and language part of it. Ethnicity isn't just a question of affiliation; it's also a question of choice. It's also a question of group membership. And it's usually associated with a geographic region. It's also often confused or conflated with nationality, but that's not the same thing. Today people identify with ethnicity positively because they see themselves as being part o...

I agree. The most important differences, at least in much of U.S. history, lie in the ways that dominant powerful institutions treat race versus ethnicity. So while one could argue that both ethnicity and race are socially constructed, their influence in terms of power and inequality is in the way that racial identities have been constructed historically. One could argue that they're both illusory and imagined. But racial categories have had a much more concrete impact on peoples' lives,...

In the law, I think there's a failure to seriously grasp the significance of the impact of racial exclusion and white supremacy in this society. There are many who don't believe that racial divisions are much different from ethnicity-based divisions; i.e., what African Americans have faced in this country is little different from what Irish Americans or Italian Americans have faced.

In the legal sphere, you get these court decisions that endorse affirmative action programs that p...