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Entry: Requiem for a Heavyweight Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/requiem_for_a_heavyweight1#720 Post contents: W.L.W., at the risk of confusing you (and me) further... In modern popular usage, at least, race has usually (not always) been thought of as a broader category than ethnicity. Thus, you read descriptions of Slavs, or Celts, or Teutons as ethnic groups belonging to the larger white race. Or Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese as members of the yellow race. Note that the last three are also nationalities. But China has many ethnicities among its 1.3 billion people. So what about Poles, Irish and Germans? Nationalities or ethnicities? Kinda both, at least most of the time. Before WWII there were large numbers of ethnic Germans(aka, Teutons)living in Poland, and large numbers of ethnic Poles (aka Slavs) living in Germany. But then there were other German Slavs called Wends and Sorbs. Related to the Poles linguistically, probably genetically, but they weren't Polish. What about those? Confusing, ain't it? 19th century writers, and even 20th century ones like Winston Churchill, often referred to people of "English race" or "Italian race" or even "American race." Thanks guys. In our even more sloppy discourse of the post-civil rights era, dominated by our fear of calling things what they are lest we offend someone, ethnic group and race have become interchangeable. When I hear a WASP high school student report that he has come from a basketball game where the opposing team was "of a different ethnicity" I can safely assume he means blacks, not Italians or Poles. Modern, sensitive people seem to find that "ethnicity" rolls off the tongue more trippingly than "race." Probably because they have been taught that, while "race" does not exist (anymore), you can still get away with saying "ethnicity" (for the time being) without being denounced by the righteous as a racist. Jones says he and Sam Francis are members of two different ethnic groups. His basis for this distinction seems to be geography (Jones, northern, Francis, southern) and religion (Jones is Catholic, Francis was a lapsed, agnostic Protestant until he apparently converted to Catholicism on his deathbed). So if Francis had moved to Chicago and converted to Popery in health, I suppose he and Jones would be in the same, not different, ethnicities. Now that I'm more confused than you were when you asked your question, I'll stop. Sent at: 2008 07 04