Yes, absolutely. The whole concept of race is obsolete and discussions of it are anachronistic to the extreme. I reckon, the only people who still use those terms in earnest are US law enforcement agents, racist groups and people who just haven't got the memo.

Not just law enforcement, the entire US government does. For example, you will see a question about your race on the 2020 census if you are in America: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/img/person1_hispani...

There are often race-related questions in job applications.

Is that sort of thing legal, in the US? Or is it more like, it's illegal but everybody does it anyway?

I live in the UK, in the EU. Here, it's illegal to ask candidates questions about their race, religion, age, marital status, family planning etc. As it is illlegal to advertise jobs to "white male 30 yrs old" etc.

Of course, people still do stuff like that- e.g. I've been asked about my age a couple of times and apparently it's common to be asked about whether you're planning to have children soon, by interviewers, though this has never happened to me (so it might depend on the industry).

I don’t think the UK is very different from the US in this respect. Discrimination based on race, religion, etc is illegal. Asking race, religion, etc as part of the application process is not illegal. Actually, they are supossed to do it (while preventing those details from influencing the hiring process).

The point is that there is a lot of people who do care about race, not just US cops.

https://race.bitc.org.uk/sites/default/files/kcfinder/files/...