ethnic vs race

This is an interesting topic, Somak. Though I'm not sure whom you are asking this question, and though my knowledge may not prove satisfactory in replying to your query, my interest in cultural studies and etymology (history of words) has proved quite too strong. Hence this note. I know my reply is not comprehensive--it is not meant to be either. I rather prefer a discussion. Not comprehensive information in one long reply. And discussions usually throw up more and further questions than expected, and there can be participants in the discussions that can cast more light on these further corners.

The Composition of English
English which we know today evolved from the language of the Angles, one of the three tribes (the other two being the Saxons and the Jutes) which invaded England of the Celtic tribe Britons (the original settlers of England) from what are now Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands in the 5th century. The strategic geographical location of the island proved so convenient for a sojourn to seafarers, pirates, other warlike nations traveling in the sea looking for plunders. Before the 5th century invasion, the Romans had occupied the island, leaving its cultural imprints still obvious at least in its place names. For example, caster/chester/cester (from Latin castra , meaning camp, a common designation in Old English for a town or enclosed community) in Chester, Colchester, Dorchester, Manchester, Winchester, Lancaster, Doncaster, Gloucester, Worcester, etc. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes came after the Romans left England in AD 410. Then came the Norman conquest of 1066, which poured French cultural elements into the island. Quite unusually, all nations that came and invaded and colonized England did not obliterate the existing language and culture, but they rather got assimilated into what was already there, making it a richer culture than before.

The history of England’s culture, at least its language testifies to the truth of the old adage the geography of a land is the fate of its people. English, thus, is the world’s most receptive language, and it has incorporated into itself, in various stages of its history, words from almost all languages across the world. (The open mentality of the speakers of English is quite an antithesis of us Manipuris with our notorious “cultural cleansing” mentality, maintaining that we should stick to what is originally ours. What was originally ours at all?) The words English has swallowed from others and Anglicized greatly outnumber the few words derived from Anglo-Saxon.

The history of English gave birth to a possibility which is not usually the case with most languages—synonyms, words in the same language with the same or nearly the same meaning. The animal the Anglo-Saxons called “sheep” was “mutton” for the Norman (French) colonial masters (after the Norman conquest of 1066). While the colonial slave Anglo-Saxons tended the animals, prepared the meat for food, they called them “sheep” in their language; however, as soon as the dish was served on the colonial masters’ table, the masters called the animal “mutton” in their language. Then, the animal acquired two words for the Anglo-Saxons—the animal was “sheep” as long as it was with them, and it was “mutton” once it was prepared for food, and they usually did it for their colonial masters. Now, the meat of sheep is no more called “sheep”; it is only “mutton”. Hasn’t French (=result of Norman Conquest) enriched English?

Ethnic and race
Race
History explains the question of “ethnic” and “race” also (I don’t see an antonymous sense or a sense of mutual opposition between the two words, if I understand “vs” in the thread title “ethnic vs race” correctly). Ethnic [initially it was only an adjective, now it is used also as a noun] and race have some overlapping semantic space, while the rest is different. “Race” entered into English first in the 16th century via French from Italian “razza”, denoting “a group with common features”. “Race” broadly means “the descendants of a common ancestor; a family, tribe, people, or nation, believed or presumed to belong to the same stock; a lineage; a breed” (Oxford Shorter Dictionary).

This elaboration may help us better grasp the concept of race:

Naturalists and ethnographers divide mankind into several distinct varieties, or races. Cuvier refers them all to three, Pritchard enumerates seven, Agassiz eight, Pickering describes eleven. One of the common classifications is that of Blumenbach, who makes five races: the Caucasian, or white race, to which belong the greater part of the European nations and those of Western Asia; the Mongolian, or yellow race, occupying Tartary, China, Japan, etc.; the Ethiopian, or negro race, occupying most of Africa (except the north), Australia, Papua , and other Pacific Islands; the American, or red race, comprising the Indians of North and South America; and the Malayan, or brown race, which occupies the islands of the Indian Archipelago, etc.” (Oxford Shorter Dictionary)

Whether all these human races have a single, common (evolutionary) origin is something science has yet to confirm (for the last time) as far as I know.

Ethnic
“Ethnic” is first attested in English from the late Old English period (late 14th and early 15th centuries) originating from Greek ethnikos (deriving from the Greek root ethnos, meaning nation, or people, or a band of people living together, or people of one’s own kind). Ethnikos meant “adopted to the genius or customs of a people, peculiar to a people”. The current sense of “ethnic” dates from the 19th century.

Ethnic is (more) cultural in sense while race is more biological. The Marings and the Maos are different ethnic groups but they are of the same race, broadly Mongoloid. More broadly, these two tribes belong together in the larger ethnic group called Naga. Even the Meiteis, though ethnically distinct, belong with the Nagas in the same race, the Mongoloids. Earlier “ethnic” also had (with its residue still felt) a contextual attitudinal significance (deriving from its original sense of “heathen” and “pagan”), which in no way “race” can have—people of supposedly a higher civilization look down upon other people of supposedly (far) lower stage of cultural advancement in terms of “ethnic” groups, uncivilized people who are different from “us”, who do not worship the true God “we” worship. A passage from the entry for “ethnic” on Online Etymology Dictionary may shed some more light on this:

In Septuagint, Greek ta ethne translates Hebrew goyim, plural of goy "nation," especially of non-Israelites, hence "Gentile nation, foreign nation not worshipping the true God" (see goy), and ethnikos is used as "savoring of the nature of pagans, alien to the worship of the true God," and as a noun "the pagan, the Gentile." The classical sense of "peculiar to a race or nation" in English is attested from 1851, a return to the word's original meaning; that of "different cultural groups" is 1935; and that of "racial, cultural or national minority group" is American English 1945. Ethnic cleansing is attested from 1991.

As noted above, what I have said is just introductory but not comprehensive. I would appreciate it more if we discuss this in great detail.

Though "ethnic" does not by etymology have a biological sense in it, every ethnic group, if we examine them very closely, is distinct from any other biologically, at least to speak about their appearance (which is caused by biological factors). The hill tribes of Manipur are different in their appearance from the Meiteis, which is biological not cultural. Even among the Meiteis, the Kakching people look quite different from the Wabagai and Hiyanglam people, a difference only those who have seen or observed these groups of people for quite considerably long. "Ethnic" as a word can be cultural in sense, but each ethnic group in one sense is a sub, or sub-sub-race. Quite a micro-race, which many/most may not want to acknowledge.

Notably, an ethnic group is composed of individuals of the same racial stock. No two individuals from different racial stocks belong ethnically together. Culture and law are not given and thus patrilineality and matrilineality are constructs. Biology is another thing altogether. The race and ethnicity of the child out of interracial marriage is determined culturally and legally depending on which society (patrilineal or matrilineal?) it is born into, (more often) irrespective (except in very conspicuous cases) of its genetic/biological attributes. The legal possibility of one's receiving American nationality and citizenship if one (irrespective of its parents' nationality and citizenship) is born in the USA or in a US territory (USC Section 1401) is not a biological thing, and it does not change one's ethnicity. In fact, in most cases legal codes follow the practice of their subjects, and practice shows every kind of human strengths and frailties, from kindheartedness to selfishness, from open-heartedness to narrow-mindedness and xenophobia, etc. Thus practice complicates things--not all people are philosophers and scientists, and not all philosophers and scientists are great lovers of all humans irrespective of their race and ethnicity. In any case, ethnicity and race questions are categorically different from nationality and citizenship questions, though they may be related in certain cases.