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Notes -
Why does tension and eventual breakup mean race must be the main arbiter of which team you're on? France had tension despite being relatively homogeneous right before the French Revolution; China broke up and reunified countless times throughout history, all the while slowly Sinicizing major parts of modern China so that even genetically different people who didn't use to be "Chinese" became culturally "Chinese."
Racial differences are not the sole cause of internal conflict within a country. China (or at least the core parts of what we think of as typical China) has been majority Han for thousands of years. That unity and staying power is impressive. China kept returning, Rome died. China was the opposite of multicultural for the period where it was homogenizing everyone into being Han. Indeed, it was more modern-sounding innovations like affirmative action for Mongols and Central Asians in civil service tests under the Yuan, (amongst other things) that angered the Han.
Because it's the most obvious, salient difference. If you're of a different race it almost certainly means you have different culture as well, probably different language and the other dividing characteristics I mentioned above. Yugoslavia, the Austrian Empire, Ottoman Empire, Soviet Union, Roman Empire... Where there are racial differences, these usually become central in times of imperial collapse - the French Empire was unique in being fairly homogenous and even then we have Haiti as a clear example of what I'm talking about: someone on top, tension, break-up and collapse of the old system.
Ah I see where you’re coming from, thanks for elaborating. Given the genetic diversity of “Han,” is it not possible to extend racial identity to promote group cohesion? I can think of “white” expanding to include Italians as another example where the genetics didn’t change but the concept of what the “race” entails did.
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