nationality vs ethnicity

On a global scale, different ethnicities are mixed within the same area or country, and issues prevail due to difficulties with nationalities and ethnicities. Nationality and ethnicity are difficult to organize in many regions, particularly in the British Isles. The four main ethnicities are English, Welsh, Scots, and Irish. However, there are only two countries: the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom, yet most Irish people in that region feel a stronger cultural connection to the Republic of Ireland, which is a separate country. Moreover, the Welsh and Scottish were merged with the United Kingdom, though they remain as local governments; the Scottish were also allowed to retain their own education system and local laws. Although Scotland and Wales are legally under the United Kingdom, they continue to retain distinct ethnic characteristics from England. Due to national borders not following the ethnic distributions in this region, many feel a disconnection between their ethnicity and nationality.

Another ethnic-nationality conflict is the one between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan. In Taiwan, there is no Taiwanese nationality, and its citizens are mostly of the Chinese ethnicity; it is not recognized as a sovereign state. However, Taiwan acts completely independent of mainland China, despite being officially recognized as a territory of mainland China. The conflict dates back to 1949, when the Republic of China (ROC) government relocated to Taiwan while fighting a civil war with the Chinese Communist Party. Since then, the ROC government began ruling Taiwan, leaving the two regions under different governments. In 1971, the United Nations General Assembly recognized the PRC as the only legitimate representative of China, thereby acknowledging Taiwan as a territory of China and causing the withdrawal of the ROC from the United Nations. The PRC claims that Taiwan is China’s territory, since it is mostly ethnically Chinese and does not have a separate nationality. On the other hand, Taiwan continues to act as an independent country, holding their own presidential elections and participating in global trade separately from mainland China. The conflict still remains to this day, with Taiwan not officially recognized as an independent nation but still participating in global activities as one.

segregation

Segregation means to separate an individual or a group from other people, and in the U.S., racial segregation prevailed, where people of color were separated from white people. White flight, explained above, is also an example of racial segregation. Segregation laws were often described as “separate but equal,” but were actually unequal and unfair towards people of color. These laws forced black people to use separate shops, bus seats, restaurants, water fountains, and schools, and the stores or schools that black people had to use were generally more underfunded and did not match the “white-only” ones. The segregation laws were also called “Jim Crow” laws, named after a 19th century song-and-dance act that was meant to offensively depict black people. These laws were finally lifted during the 1950s and 1960s, when more efforts were made to stop the racial separation. One such notable case is the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, where the Supreme Court ruled that having separate schools for races was unconstitutional because racial separation marked minorities as inferior and therefore could not be “separate but equal.”