In a whirlwind debate, which lead on to many off topic discussions and heated arguments, it was said by my colleague that an individual nation can be considered a race because they share the same language and religion. To be more specific, they argued that Japan could be considered a nation on their own for their difference in language and their slight differences from other oriental asians. My counter-argument being that different races are to be considered by similarities in physical characteristics among large groups of humans. Not so much being in a stalemate rather than a damp lull of utter stuborness on both sides, I've decided to put this up on forums such as these to gain a general wide input on the matter.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/race

# A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics.
# A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution: the German race.

can be both i think, according to that

There are lots of different types of races... There's a caucasian/african-american races, asian, anglo-saxon etc etc. Then there are races based on nationality rather than skin colour. It's all just a way of classifying people into groups, which imo isn't really necessary. It depends on what context you're looking at it in as to what race a particular person belongs to.