4.5: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity

Exploring Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity

Ethnicity refers to a shared cultural identity based on common social, historical, ancestral, national, or regional experiences. An ethnic group is a subgroup whose members share a sense of common identity rooted in similarities such as history, language, religion, traditions, values, and sometimes ancestry. Ethnicity is sometimes confused with race but the two concepts are different. Race is typically based on socially defined physical differences, while ethnicity is based more on shared culture and collective identity.

Pow Wows provide an example of how ethnicity is expressed and maintained through shared cultural practices. For many Native American communities, they are important cultural gatherings that celebrate shared heritage, identity, and tradition through music, dance, regalia, and community participation.

Like race, ethnicity is socially constructed and its meaning has changed over time. People may be identified by others or self-identify with ethnicities in complex and even contradictory ways. For example, Irish, Italian American, Russian, Jewish, and Serbian identities may all be ethnic identities, even though many members of these groups are often classified racially as white in the United States. Ethnicity continues to matter in everyday life and in institutions, including the census, diversity initiatives, nondiscrimination laws, and personal identity.

Ethnicity is also different from national origin, although the two are sometimes confused. National origin refers to a person’s connection to a particular country or place of birth, while ethnicity refers to shared cultural identity. A country may contain many ethnic groups. For example, someone in the United States might refer to Vietnamese people as one ethnic group, but Vietnam is home to 54 officially recognized ethnic groups.

Shared cultural characteristics can foster a strong sense of belonging, but ethnicity is not experienced in the same way by all members of a group (Kottak & Kozaitis, 2012). Social class, gender, region, occupation, migration history, and generation all shape how ethnic identity is expressed and lived. For example, two people of Mexican descent may both identify strongly as Mexican, yet have different lifestyles, opportunities, health outcomes, and daily practices depending on whether they live in Southern California or Las Vegas, work as a college professor or a housekeeper, or occupy different class positions. In this way, ethnicity reflects both shared culture and variation within groups.

Ethnicity can also take pan-ethnic forms, in which several distinct ethnic or national-origin groups are brought together under a broader collective identity. For example, people with roots in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and neighboring countries may sometimes identify under broader categories such as Southeast Asian or Asian American, especially in the context of the United States. Similarly, people with roots in Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean may be grouped under labels such as Latino, Latina, Latinx, or Hispanic. 

Finally, not everyone sees ethnicity as central to their identity. Some people may have mixed or blended cultural backgrounds, may not have maintained strong ties to a specific ancestral tradition, or may know little about their ethnic heritage (Kottak & Kozaitis, 2012). As a result, they may not feel a strong sense of connection or solidarity with a particular ethnic group. In other cases, people may practice symbolic ethnicity, meaning they express ethnic identity in occasional or selective ways rather than through deeper everyday ties to a cultural community (Gans, 1979). For example, an Irish American person might celebrate St. Patrick’s Day or enjoy Irish foods, even if Irish ethnicity plays only a small role in their daily life.

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