You are taking American conceptual categories and applying them to explain things elsewhere in the world. I think that's a mistake.
"Races" are fundamentally colonial categories. When you are in a world of ethnic nation states, the lines separating the ingroup from various outgroups are based on combinations of ethnicity, culture, religion, language, and history. The differences are often very subtle by American standards. After all, the most important outgroups often consist of people very much like you who happen to live across the border.
In many Asian and European countries, discrimination is primarily based on whether people perceive you as a foreigner or a local, and on how favorably people view that particular group of foreigners. That correlates with what Americans would call "race", but there are important differences. America in contrast focuses much more on "race". You can often fit in better as a white foreigner than a black American, which is weird by European standards. All those differences that separate us Europeans from each other suddenly vanish, and you can easily fit in the ingroup, at least if you don't make too much noise about your foreignness.
"Races" are fundamentally colonial categories. When you are in a world of ethnic nation states, the lines separating the ingroup from various outgroups are based on combinations of ethnicity, culture, religion, language, and history. The differences are often very subtle by American standards. After all, the most important outgroups often consist of people very much like you who happen to live across the border.
In many Asian and European countries, discrimination is primarily based on whether people perceive you as a foreigner or a local, and on how favorably people view that particular group of foreigners. That correlates with what Americans would call "race", but there are important differences. America in contrast focuses much more on "race". You can often fit in better as a white foreigner than a black American, which is weird by European standards. All those differences that separate us Europeans from each other suddenly vanish, and you can easily fit in the ingroup, at least if you don't make too much noise about your foreignness.