“Governments, schools and companies keep track of your race. The statistics are used to track the proportion of blacks and whites who graduate from school. They tell us how many people identify themselves as Native American or Asian. They help us measure health disparities. But there’s a problem with all those statistics — and the deeper way we think about race.”

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/02/11/275087586/study-stereotypes-drive-perceptions-of-race