A person's nationality is determined by the nation they're from/a citizen of/ or identifying as, based on familial origins.
A persons race is dependent on their skin color or " a category of humankind that shares certain distinctive physical traits." according to National Geographic.
But overall..are we not all the same species?
The definition of a species, according to Oxford dictionary, is: "a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding."
Last I checked, every human on planet earth is capable of interbreeding. We are all made up of living organisms (hell, we are a living organism)..as far as similar individuals goes..unless there are some complications in the womb or at birth; we are all born with one brain, 2 eyes, 2 ears, one nose, one mouth equipped with a tounge, 10 fingers-5 on each hand and 10 toes-5 on each foot.
So, why then, was there a reason to divide us into other categories? Race, ethnicity, nationality..why on every government form, on every application (job or otherwise), are these questions asked about us? The use of the word 'race' to describe a person wasn't even a thing until the late 16th century in the English language. Why do the powers that be, the people in charge, ones who call the shots of our lives, feel the need to label us the same way we categorize and label our own inventories as citizens? We divide our food supplies (fruits, vegetables, animals) to tell the difference between our food. We dived our herbs, plants, flowers, and chemicals produced by such into categories to tell the difference between what we can use for medicines, on food, in cleaning supplies, etc.
So are we just inventory for the shot callers? Are we just a supply of some sort? Being kept track of by the set of imaginary lines we live within, created by them, that we call a nation? And within that nation, being kept track of by our skin color and where our ancestors are from?
Why should any of that matter while applying for financial aide to go to college? Sure, you could say the obvious answer: racism. The masses followed suit causing the division in our society today. The masses ran with narrative and lie that, underneath our skin and outside those imaginary lines, we are not the same. But I really believe it's much more and it goes much deeper than that.
We are being marked from birth, to our first day of school, to our last day of school, to the start and end of our first and last jobs, what we do and where we end up after retirement, to the hospital we end up at, the year, day, hour and minute we take our last breath, all the way to the plot we are buried in.
But why? Why are we being kept track of the same way a massive farm owner keeps track of all his animals?
And why with our "nationality"/ethnicity and race? When clearly we are all the same species with no need for any other categorization. We are humans, not plants.
To me, it's obvious that there is a deeper meaning behind those boxes we mindlessly check when we're filing out government forms.