A lot of our modern focus on race also dates back to such well-meaning attempts, ironically enough. There was a very real focus in the Progressive era to try a

A lot of our modern focus on race also dates back to such well-meaning attempts, ironically enough. There was a very real focus in the Progressive era to try and get people to see themselves as "white", in preference to their more meaningful ethnic origin - this is something that impacted people from Germany and other parts of central Europe quite a bit, because of how wide-spread anti-German sentiment and discrimination was in the run-up to WWI. Of course racial self-identification is considered especially divisive today, but it used to not always be viewed as such.