I suggest y'all watch the race ends here PBS special
But race is a recently invented uniquely American social construct used to keep whites on top and blacks on the bottom of social hierarchy.
There however been many ethnicities that are currently classified as white but did not originally have white status and were relegated to similar social conditions as black namely Irish, Jews, Italians, and Eastern Europeans. Mexicans in Texas were originally considered white because they didn't fit into the already established races of black and white, however the whites continued to segregate them and used this as a way to keep them from serving on the jury.
They even fought at the supreme court for their right to be considered white and enjoy the luxuries whites have (however this was before the Chicano movement).

Race was used early in the colonies because the black slaves and white servants were gonna revolt against their masters. The masters just gave the poor whites a little more privilege than blacks and created race to pacify the whites and create division between blacks and whites. Since this was implemented even before America was an independent nation and is all that we know, I don't think we'll ever move past the notion of race in our society because we been indoctrinated since before we were even conceived. Unfortunately others deemed nonwhite (asians, latinos, and c00ns) falsely believe that they are on the same level of whites or they view them as gods and view themselves as superior to blacks despite being put on a similar level.