Race is only significant to human life insofar as it correlates with class, or more broadly, with the quality of life. That is to say, whatever you may consider race to be, it is only a problem if your racial assignment has an effect on your life course. Or, put another way, race exists for racism – more generally, for the reinforcement of political-economic boundaries in society and the maintenance of inequality.

That is a major reason why race can be so confusing. It is social difference masquerading as biological difference. The relationships between colonized and colonizers are frequently reducible to non-Europeans and Europeans. Despite its etymological origin (in the subjugation of the Slavic peoples of central Europe) the relationships between slaves and slavers became easily reducible to Africans and Europeans.