The only reason it used in that manner today is because we have come accustomed to race...race in fact does equal human, but as human's we are naturally lazy and would rather make a new definition rather then a new word. Ethnicity is the nationality which is also primarily based off the color of a person's skin. Culture is the circle of customs and beliefs according to a person's ethnicity. So yes, while it is in the dictionary the actual word itself has nothing to do with color or ethnicity.

Main Entry: 1eth·nic
Pronunciation: \ˈeth-nik\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Late Latin ethnicus, from Greek ethnikos national, gentile, from ethnos nation, people; akin to Greek ēthos custom — more at sib
Date: 15th century
1: heathen
2 a: of or relating to large groups of people classed according to common racial, national, tribal, religious, linguistic, or cultural origin or background <ethnic minorities> <ethnic enclaves> b: being a member of a specified ethnic group <an ethnic German> c: of, relating to, or characteristic of ethnics <ethnic neighborhoods> <ethnic foods>

Wrong. According to sociology there is only one race. Because we are completely biologically the same.

Attempts have been made to classify humans since the 17th cent., when scholars first began to separate types of flora and fauna. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach was the first to divide humanity according to skin color. In the 19th and early 20th cent., people such as Joseph Arthur Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, mainly interested in pressing forward the supposed superiority of their own kind of culture or nationality, began to attribute cultural and psychological values to race. This approach, called racism, culminated in the vicious racial doctrines and anti-Semitism of Nazi Germany and was used to justify slavery and segregation in the United States, apartheid in the Republic of South Africa, and European imperialism and colonialism generally.

(Excerpt taken from my University website)

i didn't say that it was a good thing to seperate people into these biological sub-categories....just pointing out that it does have a true definition that is different than ethnicity

fear....they are very close definitions...however, race includes something that ethnicity does not

the biological part of us is what race is referring to more so than the cultural part, which is one ethnicity focuses on

ethnicity excludes the biological part and that is the difference....so there really are races, or biological sub-species

race 1 (rs)
n.
1. A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics.
2. A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution: the German race.
3. A genealogical line; a lineage.
4. Humans considered as a group.
5. Biology
a. An interbreeding, usually geographically isolated population of organisms differing from other populations of the same species in the frequency of hereditary traits. A race that has been given formal taxonomic recognition is known as a subspecies.
b. A breed or strain, as of domestic animals.
6. A distinguishing or characteristic quality, such as the flavor of a wine.


You're right it is biological...but biologically we are all still human. Therefore human is the race.