This article and few others on the topic have been in my head for weeks; I just haven't put them down yet. But Tas T's article made me write it. (By the way, Kudos. Great delineation there.)
As a collegiate debater, we competed using the definition for ethnicity as "the culture with which one identifies." If one simply scans this, the response is something like, "Sure sounds logical." The definition was in our interpersonal communication course so it had validity. But what does it mean?
I break it down as follows:
1. A person doesn't have to speak any particular language to belong to an ethnicity. A Hispanic brought up speaking only English, Japanese, or some other language is no less Hispanic, right? There's more to ethnicity.
2. A person doesn't have to actually be from the country where their ethnicity derives, i.e. a first-generation immigrant. I don't think there's any limit of generational removal from the point of origin. (Interesting fact I heard somewhere: More people of Irish decent live in and around the Boston area than in Ireland.)
3. A person does not have to genetically originate from the place they derive their ethnic heritage. A person whose physical attributes do not look like the people s/he lives with does not disqualify him/her from being a part of that culture. The person identifies with this culture and it is theirs. Ethnically, therefore, they are of these people.
This is where the definition gets tricky. It seems that WHATEVER culture I identify with, I belong to. There seems to be a choice involved. Therefore, it would seem possible to change my ethnicity, should I choose to. I'd only have to begin identfying with another culture to do it.
I know you may think I'm being flippant, but I'm not. I'm stating a real problem with our current way of viewing culture and ethnicity. It's not all black and white, if you'll excuse the pun. It's just not simple, as Tas T pointed out. And most people are a product of more than one culture. The students I teach are likely to mix the urban black culture with the urban hispanic culture; the rural white culture with the rural hispanic culture; the "preps" and the "gangstas" are uniting. We see it in music everyday as music styles meld into one another and borrow. Culture exchange. We choose the culture we belong to; we choose, we create our ethnicity.