About [0], in Portuguese we have abolished the usage of the term "race" for human beings for exactly that reason. Now we exclusively use the term "ethnicity".
Edit: What about the downvotes? Are people going crazy?
Using more precise terms in language has nothing to do with being an utopia. Really, as a native Portuguese speaker it sounds really weird to ask about the race of a human being.
> They're on a path to becoming more racially progressive than much of the U.S.
Having spent time in Brazil and as a luso-American, that is ridiculous. Brazil has an even bigger problem with racist police violence and extra-judicial killings than the US does!
In fairness the U.S. has been on a regressive trajectory for the last ~10 years, so anyone who isn't similarly regressive is "on a path to becoming more racially progressive than much of the U.S.", strictly speaking.
When the racism is more visible because the racists feel more comfortable broadcasting their messages, and indeed when the media and academy effectively and institutionally endorse and promote those messages, that seems like textbook regression.