And why can't an arbitrary set of genetic and cultural traits have a name? Everything else in this universe can be broken down to an arbitrary set of something. Why for e.g. call somebody an American when it's only a person living withing arbitrary lines on map?
I'm sorry but that is a really weird argument. Who are those groups of people who want us to pretend there are no similarities or differences between them and other groups of people?
At the very least, representation in government. People who share my ethnicity have unique social problems that don't apply to any other "race". I don't need a race, but the people who share my background need to be discernible on a census.
But you just said "people who share my ethnicity", which has nothing to do with race. People of any race can share your ethnicity. Is a black Mexican closer in culture to a Nigerian or to a Mexican?
I'm not sure you understand how governments work. That's ok. On a census, there's no box to check off every strain that makes up my ethnicity. There's a box that says "Hispanic". I'm being descriptive, not prescriptive.
You're right. My comment was uncharitable and US-centric. Sorry. I found it hard to not react because of the personal stake I feel I have in this sort of conversation. I'll try to do better.
That's mostly down to a weird quirk of English, which uses the word "race" for both ~"breed" and "species", so you can say "There are no 'races', we're all just the Human Race!". In most other languages, where "race" means only ~"breed" and not "species", that's as silly as saying "There are no 'breeds', all dogs are just the Dog Species!" Yeah, sure, but a Dachshund is quite different from a Great Dane in many ways (and, yes, of course quite similar in many more), so the statement is nonsense. They're both the Dog species, but different breeds.
Limit the word to mean only ~"breed" and it does kind of make sense for humans, too: There are definitely sub-groups of us, the members of which share many similar physical characteristics within the group and differ in these characteristics between the groups, because of long genetic isolation. If you look at it calmly you realise that's not a big problem in and of itself -- the problems come when you start claiming some of these groups are inherently superior or inferior to each other: One can admit that an African differs from an Asian, while still realising that a blanket statement saying an African is "better" than an Asian or vice versa is as silly as a blanket statement saying a Dachshund is "better" than a Great Dane or vice versa.
I'm not sure, but it often feels like this linguistic oddity makes the whole subject so much more inflamed and harder to discuss in the English-speaking world.