Race fixes status by ancestry while ethnicity permits negotiated identity

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

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes ethnicity (agency-based, assimilable) from race (fixed by phenotype and African blood quantum) in the American context.
• ADDENDUM: Connects to the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ article’s theme of race-ethnicity markers as identity/political signaling, and to how groups are slotted near or far from Whiteness.
• XREF: connects to: Published multiracial research skews Latinx and views ancestry as a categorical aid. — Tatiana I. Zamora and Amado M. Padilla, Making sense of conflicting messages of…, 105; Physical and symbolic ties to homeland drive minority-race identification in children — Tatiana I. Zamora and Amado M. Padilla, Making sense of conflicting messages of…, 122; Mixed members treat racial-ethnic identities as context-switchable need satisfiers (+6 more)