Ethnicity need not be essentialist or hierarchical in the way race categories are

Evidence

Second, an advocacy of hybridity carries with it the imputation that all group-based identities are essentialist. This is most clearly demonstrated in the conflation of ethnicity and nationalism with racism which, as so-called “rooted” identities, are all treated with equal disparagement … But while ethnic and national categories may be essentialized in the same way as “race” categories have been historically, they need not always be. Nor are ethnic relations necessarily hierarchical, exploitative, and conflictual in the same way that “race relations” invariably are … In similar vein, Werbner (1997b) has argued that the politics of ethnicity, which objectifies communities situationally and pragmatically with regard to questions of redistributive justice in the public sphere, can be clearly distinguished from the violent essentializing of racism. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 917

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sharpens the ethnicity-versus-race distinction: ethnicity can be situational/pragmatic while racism entails essentializing and hierarchy — directly qualifies vault-wide definitions.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s stated purpose of refining ‘ethnicity vs. race’ definitions used elsewhere in the vault. — connects to: Ethnicity as a sociological concept includes but exceeds race — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 698
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 917