Race is a confusing word, difficult to properly define and often misused imo.
I don't have an OED to hand, but the Collins Dictionary has this
race
1 (r
s)
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.
[French, from Old French, from Old Italian razza,
race, lineage.]
Usage Note: The notion of race is nearly as problematic from a scientific point of
view as it is from a social one. European physical anthropologists of
the 17th and 18th centuries proposed various systems of racial
classifications based on such observable characteristics as skin color,
hair type, body proportions, and skull measurements, essentially
codifying the perceived differences among broad geographic populations
of humans. The traditional terms for these populations
Caucasoid (or
Caucasian),
Mongoloid, Negroid, and in some systems
Australoidare now controversial in both technical and nontechnical usage, and in some cases they may well be considered offensive. (
Caucasian does retain a certain currency in American English, but it is used
almost exclusively to mean "white" or "European" rather than "belonging
to the Caucasian race," a group that includes a variety of peoples
generally categorized as nonwhite.) The biological aspect of race is
described today not in observable physical features but rather in such
genetic characteristics as blood groups and metabolic processes, and the
groupings indicated by these factors seldom coincide very neatly with
those put forward by earlier physical anthropologists. Citing this and
other points
such as the fact that a person who is considered black in one society might be nonblack in another
many cultural anthropologists now consider race to be more a social or mental construct than an objective biological fact.