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I've noticed how more and more people use the term "ethnicity" to mean "race". Here's an example from 1:26:20 in the latest Honestly with Bari Weiss podcast episode "Has Freedom Failed Us? A Debate" (which is otherwise excellent, I might do another post on its contents later):
It might be pedantic, but this annoys me. My understanding is that ethnicity is cultural: If a Hungarian couple adopts a Chinese baby and raises it in Hungary, that child will be ethnically Hungarian when grown up (but it will "have Chinese decent" or more controversial "be racially Chinese" or "be racially Asian").
I understand that people tiptoe around the word "race" since misusing it can get you cancelled but replacing it with another word that means something else is just wrong.
This is the end of this rambling. Has anyone else noticed this?
This is interesting. In my conversations, everyone I’ve talked to uses ethnicity to mean a sub-race delineated by common genes. But looking online in dictionaries and articles, the definition says something else: a social and cultural construct. This might be one of those instances where the definition in popular use is not the definition you find in dictionaries. At least I think this is true in Northeastern USA.
If I were to speculate, it probably has something to do with Americans who think of themselves German or Italian, because they have one immigrant parent, but cannot even speak their language. Many such cases. They think that they are part of one of those European ethnicities, which is why they are confused what “ethnicity” is.
It is much clearer in Europe: people of different countries are, by and large, of different ethnicity, and some countries even have multiple ethnic groups within the country (e.g. Belgium or Russia). An Italian living in Italy would find the idea that Italian-American with Italian parent who doesn’t even speak Italian, to be his fellow Italian, rather ludicrous.
That’s because Italian Americans are their own unique ethnos with their own unique culture. But if you were some Irish American living amongst Italian Americans your whole life, you would never say you were ethnically Italian, you would say you were an ethnic Irishman who was culturally Italian. In America, someone might say they are culturally Italian and refer to Italian Americans. This change is similar to how the ancestors of modern Italians would be aghast that they speak modern Italian instead of their regional tongue.
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