Think of them as concentric spheres. It's what makes it possible to understand grief and joy across language barriers. Gender is primal. Race is primal, and so is inherited ethnicity, those birth characteristics that form one of the more than 3,500 ethnicities in the world. Nonetheless we are all unique, so we can never assume we know someone just because we know his or her ethnicity.
Stereotypes easily turn into prejudice and racism.
A third cultural level is absorbed culture. It includes our nationality, language, religious experience and communal ethnicity. Absorbed culture modifies primal cultural influences. For instance, a Norwegian raised in Mexico may act and feel more Latino than Scandinavian. The fourth, or outermost, level is learned culture.