If I am telling a story about person A and the person listening to the story has not met them (and lives in the wrong part of the world to do so), I am quite fond of NOT mentioning that person A was non-white.
Reason being, I want to see their reaction purely to the events in the story and not have the listener, mistakenly, think that my focus is on their heritage and I am setting out my opinions on an entire group of people.
If you tell a story and feel the need to mention the colour or nationality of one of the protagonists, think carefully about why you feel the need to do that. (Unless you are the ail MilaDy and this is your stock-in-trade). :-P
Personally, I cannot think of any definition of 'race' which doesn't fall over, when subjected to scientific scrutiny, except the one which asserts that there is only the 'human race'.
There is a curious thing about Herring Gulls and Lesser Black-Backed Gulls, whereby the north American Herring gulls get darker the further west you go, darker still, as you go further west across the Russian steppes, until you get Lesser Black-Backed ones in western Europe. They've recently found that they are 100% genetically compatible but simply *choose* not to interbreed, on the whole (unusual hybrids sometimes crop up).
This is sexual selection in action and also a case of choosing a mate based on external looks. I can easily see how the human race became so divergent for similar reasons.
It's unfortunate that we get so hung up about where people come from. More unfortunate that some 19th century gits had to dream up a concept to set us apart from (and 'above') people who were not like them and more unfortunate still that those on the receiving end of the prejudice it engendered still (have to) perpetuate this concept and find it necessary to tell us how much certain nametags offend them as well as when yesteryear's 'more acceptable' tag is this year's unacceptable tag.
Has anyone referenced Cumberbatch's 'senior moment' yet?