The concept of "race" emerged in the 1600s with the trans-Atlantic slave trade, justifying slavery; it has been used to justify exploitation, denigration and decimation. Since then, despite contrary scientific evidence, a deeply-rooted belief has taken hold that "race," indicated by, e.g., skin color or facial features, reflects fundamental biological differences. We propose that the term "race" be abandoned, substituting "ethnic group" while retaining "racism," with the goal of dismantling it. Despite scientific consensus that "race" is a social construct, in official U.S. classifications, "Hispanic"/"Latino" is an "ethnicity" while African American/Black, American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian/Pacific Islander, and European American/White are "races." There is no scientific basis for this. Each grouping reflects ancestry in a particular continent/region and shared history, e.g., the genocide and expropriation of Indigenous peoples, African Americans' enslavement, oppression and ongoing disenfranchisement, Latin America's Indigenous roots and colonization. Given migrations over millennia, each group reflects extensive genetic admixture across and within continents/regions. "Ethnicity" evokes social characteristics such as history, language, beliefs, customs. "Race" reinforces notions of inherent biological differences based on physical appearance. While not useful as a biological category, geographic ancestry is a key social category for monitoring and addressing health inequities because of racism's profound influence on health and well-being. We must continue to collect and analyze data on the population groups that have been racialized into socially constructed categories called "races." We must not, however, continue to use that term; it is not the only obstacle to dismantling racism, but it is a significant one. While not useful as a biological category, geographic ancestry is a key social category for monitoring and addressing health inequities because of racism's profound influence on health and well-being. We must continue to collect and analyze data on the population groups that have been racialized into socially constructed categories called “races.” We must not, however, continue to use that term; it is not the only obstacle to dismantling racism, but it is a significant one. The continued distinction between “race” and “ethnicity” only serves to underscore the implication that “race” reflects biological differences. The continued use of the term “race” is by no means the only or even the principal obstacle to addressing racism. It is, however, a significant obstacle because it is irremediably imbued with scientifically unfounded but nevertheless tenacious notions of biological differences and hierarchy which have long served to justify exploitation and oppression. The use of “race,” even by those who abhor racism, tends to reinforce those notions. While changing “race” to “ethnic group” would not eliminate this conceptual problem, it may be a small but important step in helping us to reconceptualize superficial physical difference as reflective of social and cultural diversity rather than biology. If race were biologically based, one might expect to find consistency in classification and consensus about some standard set of mutually exclusive racial groups. The concept of race has been very fluid, however, and operationalized in different ways at different times, which in itself suggests its fundamentally socially constructed nature. Later Census racial categories included White (European ancestry), Black (African ancestry), or Mulatto (mixed), and, only in the 1890 Census, “Quadroon” and “Octoroon,” classifying people by their percentage of African ancestry. Census racial categories have changed and expanded to reflect emancipation, immigration, social “Latino/Hispanic” denotes Latin American origin/ancestry (“Latino” is arguably a more appropriate term than “Hispanic,” given that many Latin Americans—for example, those from Brazil, Latin America's largest country—are not Spanish-speaking, and people from Spain—who one would expect to be included as “Hispanics”—are Europeans). Another example of the fundamentally social nature of “racial” classifications comes from a study examining the health advantage of Whiteness. Jones et al. Although racial discrimination is no longer legal, socioeconomic, and health inequities along racial lines persist because of deeply rooted, unfair systems and structures that continue to operate to sustain the legacy of formerly overtly discriminatory practices, policies, laws, and beliefs. At times, these systems and structures operate unintentionally, but nevertheless effectively, to produce and sustain racial discrimination. The support for this hypothesis comes from research on social inequality in general rather than on racism specifically: A convincing case has been made that social inequality damages the health of societies overall ( 62 , 63 ), largely by undermining social cohesion ( 64 ). Based on the literature, the figure (above) depicts a series of sequential general steps through which racism is thought to produce racial disparities in health. These general steps represent the basic skeleton of innumerable specific pathways, which are indicated by the factors listed in each box as non-exhaustive) examples. The first box on the left in Figure 1 represents the beginning of the general sequence. The common beginning or source of all the potential causal pathways is systemic or structural racism, the unjust systems or structures that systematically put people of color at a disadvantage in multiple domains. Systemic or structural racism reflect underlying differences in power and social values in a society. The relevant systems or structures include laws, policies (written and unwritten), entrenched institutional practices, and the pervasive, deeply rooted beliefs that condone, promote, and perpetuate the systems and structures.