[ethnic_throw]

I'd hazard a guess that most people don't differentiate between race and ethnicity.

I'm not sure why you'd conflate the two, to be honest—understanding your race is fairly necessary to understand how you're viewed in the US, and how you might be expected to behave. Understanding your ethnicity is an entirely different thing—e.g. legally, nobody cared if a person was french, german, or english if the question was 'black or white'. But you might care.