>If you consider it from the perspective that race and culture are typically conflated into just race...

I'd say that that only occurs in the odd case of 'Latino'. For some reason Spanish-speaking got amalgamated into a thing it didn't belong.

It happens for Europeans too. White has come to mean everyone of European descent, even though there's tons of ethnic, historical and regional differences across the continent. Asia even more so. Africa is also very diverse when you take into account Northern Africa. The whole Mediterranean area had lots of groups moving around for thousands of years across three continents.

>White has come to mean everyone of European descent

I'd be surprised if anyone in Europe even thought of themselves as 'white' until (perhaps) the post-WWII era. Wogs begin at Calais.

>Africa is also very diverse when you take into account Northern Africa.

I suppose that you could consider North Africa as a separate continent given the bordering desert. My understanding is that sub-Saharan Africa has more real-deal genetic diversity in human populations than the rest of the world put together (which makes sense given it's age).

Obviously race is a real thing. Either a giant tree of relatedness with clusters of appearance + small construction differences or simply a way to form self-interested groups (go to any prison for 10 minutes). The fascination with it as of late is unfortunate, but I'm not sure if it's a reflection of resource depletion/overpopulation, a wave of quasi-religion, or people simply forming up teams for a big fight.

I am thinking mostly with respect to African Americans...when people talk about "racism", rarely do I see anyone distinguish between biology and culture, on either "side" of the issue...which I suspect is a huge contributor to the lack of progress on the issue.