Ethnicity allows agency while American race is defined by ancestry

Evidence

Although ethnicity and race are both social constructions deployed to distinguish groups from the dominant Anglo-Saxon American identity, ethnicity grants people agency in defining the attributes of their identity and their relationship with the dominant group. The relationship can be cooperative, competitive, or outright conflictual, depending in large part on the extent of the ethnic group’s willingness and ability to assimilate. Race in the United States, by contrast, is largely defined by physical characteristics and relatedness to African ancestry. Skin color, hair texture, lip size, and nose structure are evidence of how much African blood a person possesses, with even one drop making a person Black. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 391 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

After World War II, ethnicity, as opposed to race, became the primary differentiating characteristic between Americans of different European national origins. As Richard Alba and Victor Nee note, “Ethnicity involves both social structure and the more elusive factors of subjective meaning.” For Americans of Irish, Italian, and Eastern European descent who were Catholic and Jewish, being labeled an ethnic group gave members an opportunity to become socially White on condition they assimilate into mainstream Anglo-Protestant culture and normativity. Ethnic identity, therefore, granted a person agency not available to those ascribed a racial identity. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 359 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The self-identification requirement entered law via ‘ethnic’, not via race itself — Mareike Riedel, Islamophobia, Racial Discrimination…, 36; Race fixes status by ancestry while ethnicity permits negotiated identity — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 391; Ethnic labels carried agency that racial ascription denied — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 359 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Race fixes status by ancestry while ethnicity permits negotiated identity #corroborates (0.97) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 391
• Ethnic labels carried agency that racial ascription denied #corroborates (0.95) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 359