What is race?

In health care, we tend to focus on ethnicity more than race. Ethnicity refers to a shared feeling of "peoplehood" among a group of individuals, and has more to do with cultural background.

I tell my students that the only time race is significant is when you are talking about biology. For example, the cutoff for normal waist circumference is lower for people of Asian descent, simply because they are typically physically smaller compared to other ethnic groups. Similarly, as an extremely pale skinned white person (some of my ancestry is Dutch and it turns out that the ancestors of those people probably emigrated to the Netherlands from Scandinavia), my risk for developing skin cancer is going to be much higher than that of someone with darker skin.

There are many sub divisions within any “race” and quite likely at each other’s throats on, on many occasions. Tribal, religious, cultural and political differences are much likely to cause divisions.