Ethnicity, Nationality, and Race - What Are the Differences?

I already know what nationality is from going over it in my Spanish 101 class last quarter, which is the country you're born in or are from. In my case, I was born in Mexico and then moved up to the United States, so my nationality would be Mexican/American. However, for the others, I tried Google, and while it did explain things, I still did not understand, and there weren't really any clear-cut examples.

My guess for race is that it refers to color, which would make my race white, or, to be more technical, Caucasian. However, I could be wrong and it could be being used in a different context. However, I really have no idea what ethnicity is. I used to think it referred to what a person is (eg, American), but now that I know nationality means that, I really have no clue.

It sounds like ethnicity, nationality, and race all kind of go hand-in-hand, but there have to be technical differences among them.

Any feedback will be appreciated.

 

Anyone of any race can be of any nationality. It's entirely unrelated to the others. There are people of all races in America, after all, and all of them equally American. I believe it specifically refers to the country you were born in, however, so you would be legally of Mexican nationality, not American.
Race and ethnicity are, from my understanding, essentially two words for the same thing, which is your skin tone and physical characteristics.

 

Okay, so that clears it up a little bit. However, can you give an example of a characteristic? Do you mean something like, "Amaury comes from a family of nice people, so Amaury must therefore also be nice"? I feel like the context may be different than what I'm thinking.

In regard to nationality, to clarify, all that matters is where I was born, correct? It doesn't matter that my mom is American and my dad is Mexican? I thought one's nationality was both where they were born and where they currently reside. If they happen to be different, then they'd be both. So if someone asks me what I am, is it incorrect to say Mexican-American/American-Mexican? Additionally, I have dual citizenship, but I'm not sure if that plays any role in this. Also, another quick Google search shows that one's nationality can change. Since my mom and I moved up to the US in 1998 and my dad moved up to the US a few years later, I think our nationality would be American now.

 

By characteristic I mean features such as "slanted eyes", typical to people of strong Asian decent, and so on. The kind of traits that would allow you to recognize an African-American man as African-American, even if he were albino.

I think in the case of parents being from separate countries, their child is considered to have dual-nationality, so you would be correct in identifying yourself as Mexican-American. I don't think citizenship has an affect on your Nationality, but I do know that if you're born in a certain country, you automatically have citizenship there.
I don't know the specifics on how Nationality changes, but I think you're right that it can.

 

Maybe racist people have problems with Klingons and Sandpeople. XD

Speaking of, how racist is it that the Sandpeople are called Sandpeople? Seriously, we don't call ourselves Dirtpeople, or, depending how big our town is, Cementpeople. These aliens probably have their own name in their own tongue, but since all we hear them say is

and we can't be bothered to translate or learn their language, they're Sandpeople. Because they live in sand. Nice.

#SandpeopleHaveRightsToo

(Just to clarify for anyone out there, I'm not really making fun of anti-racist movements or thoughts, and in fact I abhor racism immensely. I'm just spamming in the spam zone.)

 

I have a great relationship with the Klingons. The Klingons love me.

 

Well, just so you understand, I don't know anything about The Illusive Man. Okay? I don't know anything about what you're even talking about with human supremacy or human supremacists. So, I don't know.

 

Laziness is a trait among the Betazoids. A Betazoid counting my money. I hate it. The only people I want counting my money are little green guys who wear Jedi robes every day.

 

Sediment-American*

 

I'm going to fix Tatooine. That's a good question. But how am I going to do it? Let me tell you, I'm going to fix Tatooine. Tatooine will be fixed. I promise, I'm going to fix Tatooine.

 

#TrumpShowsUsYourLightsaber

 

Trump made Alderaan pay for the Death Star.

 

It's simple enough, really.

Nationality: Country in which you hold a citizenship. Not necessarily where you were born. You can have multiple nationalities (hence the term "dual-national").

Ethnicity: Your ethnic makeup. From which groups of people you descend. There are categories and subcategories. For example, my Ethnicity would be European - Irish. I am European because I am Irish, but I am not Irish because I am European.

Race: This is the only one that's hard to define. Has a different meaning depending on who you ask. Generally used to group together people that look the same, i.e "white", "black", "brown", etc.

So going by these definitions, terms like "German" can refer to multiple things:
i) Someone who holds a German citizenship.
ii) Someone who is of ethnic German descent (though not necessarily holding a German citizenship or living in Germany)

 

I'm understanding it better, but isn't that still a bit confusing or can there be overlap?

Let's say I've lived in Mexico my whole life. My nationality would be Mexican, but my ethnicity would also be Mexican.

 

Yep.

 

It could be worse, you could also be Jew. Which would leave people wondering whether you' re ethnically Jew, religiously Jew, culturally Jew, or a mix of those.

 

So few people stick to the dictionary definitions of those words you' re often better off asking what they mean by that exactly.