What is "ethnicity"?

[Nationalitist]

Ethnicity...

What would be the true meaning of this word, so frequently and commonly used by various identitarians and preservationists?

What would be the difference between the word, the notion and the concept of ethnicity, and other, cognate concepts, such as nation, people and, for racialists, "race"?

[Psychonaut]

Ethnicity...

What would be the true meaning of this word, so frequently and commonly used by various identitarians and preservationists?

What would be the difference between the word, the notion and the concept of ethnicity, and other, cognate concepts, such as nation, people and, for racialists, "race"?

I'd say it's more specific than some of those and more general than just race. The standard definitions of ethnicity run something along the lines of a group of people who share ancestral, linguistic, cultural, religious, etc. links. While, of course, all members of the same ethnic group would be of the same race, the converse would not hold true. A nation may be, as is Britain's case, home to many ethnicities. People is a more vague term that can mean whatever the user wants it to, right?

[NationalConservative]

People is a more vague term that can mean whatever the user wants it to, right?

I would use the correct term 'folk' instead

[Liffrea]

As defined by Oxford Reference Dictionary:

Ethnic; Of a group of mankind distinguished from others by race or by having a common national or cultural tradition.

The definition isn’t entirely correct in my opinion.

Interestingly enough my definition of ethnicity fits closest the definition given for nation:

A community of people of common descent, language, history or political institutions.

The English are biologically indistinguishable from the Scots, Welsh or Irish, but these are obvious separate national identities. This would negate the ORD definition of ethnic identity.

Some claim a nation as being of several ethnic groups, perhaps plausible in some scenarios, one may argue for a Canadian or American or Australian “nation”, I wouldn’t argue this for England where ethnic and national identity are identical . Regional difference isn’t really an expression of ethnic difference; English people share a common ancestral background regardless of location, the argument over the “Celtic” contribution to England is a none argument as we are not dealing with a racially different population for a start nor one that made any significant contribution to the formation of English identity, the English as descendents of several Germanic migratory tribes remains the origin point regardless of the level of truth within it, the origin myth remains.

I’m not particularly convinced that there is a “British” nation, in point of fact English national identity developed from it’s own idiosyncratic circumstances whilst Welsh and Scottish national identity was largely shaped in contrast to Englishness.

[Comte Arnau]

Interestingly enough my definition of ethnicity fits closest the definition given for nation:

A community of people of common descent, language, history or political institutions.


That is because the origin behind the word nation is close to that of an ethnic group. Using nation or country for an independent state is just one of those modern inaccuracies.

[SteelRose]

ethnicity:
"Culture, plus the racial traits that the members of the cultural group have in common."

nation:
"A large group of people who identify with eachother, for any reason, and live in the same area, and work together on a large scale."

race:
"A category of humans, which have in common multiple genetic traits which are of the same ancestral origin."

[Monolith]

IMO nation is a politically sovereign ethnic group, while the ethnic identity is based on:

common language
real or perceived descent from a historic ancestral population
historical connection with a certain homeland
collective memory, the most important being the memory of wars against common enemies

[Wotan88]

I agree with Monolith. For example: we have Polish nation which inhabits Poland, people living here are identified as Poles. But there are many regional differences here, there are for example Highlanders, Silesians, Kashubians and rest of Poles, who are often also diversed by regional culture.