In general, the federal and state governments in the US don't track race because the government is obsessed with it. It's because our society was and still is

In general, the federal and state governments in the US don't track race because the government is obsessed with it. It's because our society was and still is obsessed with it. It'd be nice if we could ignore these vague and mostly subjective categories that don't even mean much genetically, but we'd be burying our heads in the sand to think they don't matter. Black Americans have been discriminated against more than white Americans, so those numbers help flag emerging problems. They're also the only way to know how much we're reducing racial disparities.