one of the differences i find most interesting about living in the UK is the difference in racial profile and classification.  For example, here, the accepted (census used) race classifications are:

• white (white british, white irish, white other)
• black or black british (black carribean, black african, black other)
• asian (indian, pakistani, bangladeshi, other)
• mixed (white/black carribean, white/black african, white/asian, other)
• chinese or other

To those of us from the US, this takes some getting used to.  Terms such as bi-racial or multi-ethnic are instead just called "mixed race" – which to the american ear seems a bit crude.  "Asian" means almost exclusively those ex-commonwealth countries which still play cricket. Everyone else from the continent of asia is lumped into "chinese or other", because really, there are few koreans, vietnamese, or other asian countries demographically represented here.  (and it sounds silly to say this, but it’s so ingrained… "african-american" is obviously not in usage over here.)  the distinction between black-carribean and black-african sounds pedantic (since most black-carribeans in the u.s. would say they were of african descent) until you realise that there are a lot more african immigrants in the u.k.  there’s no hispanic category – I presume they’re expected to identify as one of the white or black categories – and the term "latino" doesn’t even exist.  and it’s a particularly strange sensation to tick the box for "white – other" when one is used to just belonging to the category at the top of the list.

when I first started working for the council, one of the first tasks I had was to write up a "Race and Equalities IMpact assessment" for a project we were doing.  and it was like learning a while new language.  we become so used to throwing around the most politically correct terms in the u.s., it’s so ingrained, that everything else feels foreign.  "wrong" somehow.  racial sensitivity often takes a back seat in a country where 87.5% of the population identify as "white british", and it takes some adjustment to get used to.

which is really just my long-winded way of saying that living in a country with such a different approach to diversity and ethnicity points out just how much of a social construct all our ideas about race and classification really are.  a person’s skin colour or background doesn’t change when they move from one country to the next – but the way they are identified by others certainly does.  and by extension, the way we identify ourselves.

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