Is Italian a race now? If you can be assigned Italian I'm not sure what's stopping you from being reassigned to something else.

It hasn't been very long since "Irish" was considered by many to be a separate race.

We've only recently stopped thinking of "Italian" as being separate. For good and bad.

I have Northern Italian friends who consider themselves very separate to the Southern Italians. The Lega Nord party was originally about Padania (Northern Italy) separatism.

Almost any group identified from the outside has internal divisions that they insist are incredibly important.

What did the Elves say? “To sheep other sheep no doubt appear different. Or to shepherds. But Mortals have not been our study.”

People can get really prickly about it, for example lumping all people south of the US border as "Hispanic" or calling everyone in the UK "English".

Who is the epistemic authority on someone's culture or ethnicity?

Northern or Southern? What about your ancestry prior to the existence of Italy?

And what does that mean, anyway? That some people in your family were born inside some arbitrary lines drawn on the ground? Who cares?

This sort of classification is meaningless.

(I, too, have Italian ancestry, but that's a small part of the overall picture, and has little to do with anything "real" about me, like my health or looks.)

And that's the intersection between race, genetic background, ethnicity, heritage, and culture.

You joke, but "assigned at birth" is probably apt. You may have discomfort or comfort in identifying with it. It may subtly change your perceptions and perceptions of you.