For crime, as an example, they usually show a sketch or a picture as well as describing the person. Black male, white male, hispanic male, facial hair, height, weight, eye color, hair color, distinguishing marks etc... If someone is wanted for questioning it really is a matter of being as descriptive as possible otherwise you're going to get a lot of useless info or absolutely none because nobody could be sure. In typical conversation it's the same, if you want to give someone a sense of the person to whom you're referring you don't just say my friend some guy. Especially when more description helps the story... I won't give any real examples of this because I'm sure someone would be offended. If you think mentioning details like race breeds racism then I don't know what to tell you. Every race commits crime so you're either going to be against every race or you're just going to consider it one of many details of the incident.