Ethnicity is changeable through assimilation while race is treated as fixed biology

Evidence

In contrast to immutable external characteristics ascribed to race, ethnicity describes a person’s culture, which they can change through acculturation and assimilation. An “ethnic White” can be rehabilitated through assimilation, whereas a racial non-White cannot, because race is deemed biological. This same discursive distinction between ethnicity and race affects Muslim identity. Will Muslim identity continue to be considered a subordinate racial trait, as is currently the case? Or will it be transformed into a purely religious identity that grants an individual Muslim agency to shape their racial identification based on ethnic origins, phenotype, and cultural assimilatory behaviors? — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 360

Categorization

• DEFINE: Crisply distinguishes ethnicity (changeable via acculturation) from race (fixed biological category) as a discursive framework.
• XREF: Connects to the book’s central project of understanding Muslim racialization, and parallels the ethnicity/race distinction in US census categories and whiteness studies.
• QUESTION: Whether Muslim identity will shift from racial to ethnic/religious status is an open empirical question worth tracking.