Talk:Bending arts/@comment-4816926-20120412230406/@comment-97.82.23.199-20120415031455

Also people tend to confuse ethnicity and race. Ethnicity and race are closely related,but are not the same. Ethnicity takes culture as well as biology into account where as race is just biological traits such as eye color and skin tone along with facial features such as bone structure.

When i stated above that the people of the avatar world are ethnically asian that also implies that they are racially asian.

For the simple fact that ethnicity is tied to endogamy and common descent. When people from the show come out and state that the avatarworld is a fantastical asian world and that the people that inhabit that world are ethnically asian then that pretty much means that the people who inhabit the avatar world are asian.

A chinese person is racially asian and a japanese person is racially asian. A german is racially white and a Italian is racially white. But a racially white german can never be a ethnic chinese even if he grew up in china. A racially asian japanese person can never be ethnically italian.

Why? Because like i said before: Ethnicity is not just culture. It is about common ancestry/Endogamy and heritage.

Theoretically a white german raised in china could try to call himself ethnically han chinese,but the true ethnic hans would have something to say about that and would never accept him as such.