To be fair the American racial categories seem pretty inane to my non-American eyes to begin with.<p>I understand that there is a lot of cultural baggage to the various categories but I can&#x27;t count how many times I&#x27;ve been genuinely surprised by Americans identifying as black or Latina&#x2F;o. The most striking ones I think were Halle Berry and Obama -- it took me a while to process that their recognition was genuinely noteworthy in the US because of their ethnicity. You could have told me Obama were Moroccan or Halle Berry were Indian and I wouldn&#x27;t have been any more surprised.<p>For context: I&#x27;m German, grew up in the 90s in a city with ~1M residents and am literally colorblind (partially green blind). I&#x27;m not sure what part of that makes me unable to properly racially categorize people but I&#x27;m not convinced that&#x27;s a bad thing.