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I need a little world building help with races in my world. Or ethnicities. They’re all human.

On one side of a mountain range I have the Dark skinned Boreus people in the north. In the south in Amray, historically there were a couple of groups. A mid to light brown group, brown and black hair, brown, green and hazel eyes. More centrally a paler group which included blue eyed blonds arrived. now they’re all quite jumbled up and mixed, with many of the Boreus also settled there. There’s a wide spectrum of skin tones.

Racism isn’t a problem in general, but if you marry someone who looks to similar to you, especially if it’s happened in your recent family history, people think you’re stuck up, or against diversity. There’s also a superstition about blonde people being unlucky.

Now on the other side of the mountain are the Dlinaati, islanders turned plains people. They’re genrally disliked by everyone else. and are trying to take over the whole continent. Black hair, mid brown skin tone, and subtly recognisable as different from a mixed Amrayen person of similar skin tone. Even a quarter Dlinaat, and some people will pick up on it. (Basically anyone who knows what to look for. It’s clear, but but not obvious.)

The question I have is how do people tell? I know that skin tone, hair colour and eye colour are far from the only distinguishing characteristics of racial groups. But I don’t write detailed character appearance descriptions, and I’m just not sure how to work it in. It does matter, because the partial Dinaat lineage of a few characters is core to the story. Maybe the Dlinaati have some unique feature of a fantasy variety. Pointed ears, something else odd about the ears. Or some kind of aquatic feature because when they were islanders, they lived in the water as much as out of it. I’m open to ideas.

Also, if anyone has feedback on the kind of reverse racism thing going on, that would helpful. It’s only touched on slightly in the story, but I know it could be seen as controversial.