What is Racism? As I Understand It.

          The phrase 'as I understand it' will likely litter my posts. I do not claim to be an authority on the origin or structure of racism, and certainly not on first person experiences. I only claim to attempt to logically and cooperatively develop my own understanding of Racism and relevant concepts.
          Defining race respectfully and effectivly is a difficult thing to do. Many view race as a division of the human species based on physical traits, especially skin tone. It is more complicated than that, even ethnicity is more complicated than that definition. Your ethnicity is more than skin tone. It is has a lot do with the way you look, but do not forget that physical traits include things like eye color, eye shape, hair color, hair texture, hair thickness, nose shape, mouth shape, chin, hips, height, ears, cheek bones, hair line, and many minute details. An African American man tends not look like exactly like a caucasian man but with darker skin. This is because natural selection and random gene shifts affects more than just skin color. I imagine that populations in harsh climates, with specific predators or danges, and with different notions of beauty ended up steering the physical attributes represented in the gene pool in a different direction than populations in different areas.
          Ethnicity is not the same as race. But June! Why did you spend a big paragraph explaining ethnicity when race is not ethnicity? That would be because they are similar and often confused for each other. You cannot choose your ethnicity, but you can choose what race to identify with. Now, if you are "darker than the ace of spades" (Preacher's Boy by Katherine Paterson, 1999) and you choose to identify with Pacific Islander, you will get some confused looks. Determining ethnicity while census taking used to be the opinion of the census taker. A stranger would look at you and decide if you are African American, Native American, Latino/a, Asian American, or Caucasian. Not everyone fits so easily into one of those categories. Some people have parentage from multiple categories. Some people are lighter or darker than what our preconceptions tell us the skin tone of a certain ethnicity should be.
         For information about more changes the Census Bureau is considering making, see Corey Dade's article Census Bureau Rethinks The Best Way To Measure Race (2012).

        As I understand it, the race a person chooses to identify with is determined by their ethnicity, their cultural background, and even the racial make-up of the parent/guardian that raises them.