Well, I would like to quote Toni Morrison, discussing the absurdity of racism on The Colbert Report :I don't think there's anything inherently racist to basically acknowledging different races
There is no such thing as race, none, there is just a human race, scientifically and biologically, racism is a construct, a social construct and it has benefits, money can be made of of it, people who don’t like themselves can feel better because of it, it can describes certain kinds of behavior that are wrong or misleading. So it has a social function, racism, but race can only be defined as a human being.
I get what you're saying and a lot of the cultural and social definitions of race are obviously a human construct, but for my initial problem, as a white mal, if I stand next to a black male, I'm going to see some physical differences, notably skin color. There are some biological differences between races, but the problem is that that there are a lot of culturally-defined groups of people that have somehow adopted the word "race." I admit the word has changed over time, but my original dilemma still stands. If I'm trying to identify someone across the room, am I limited to saying "that human being over there," or maybe should I say "the darker-skinned guy."? I'm certainly not attaching any sort of cultural or social characteristics when I say "the black guy," I'm honestly just referring to the color of skin. I don't like mentioning race in a lot of situations, like when the news is covering a piece on a criminal and they say "white male," "Latino woman," etc. because I feel like that can perpetuate those attachments we try to avoid. But in my situation, I don't think I'm attaching anything to it, and don't see why there's anything wrong with it.