The Federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) defines 'race' as not "scientific or anthropological" rather consisting of "social and cultural characteristics as well as ancestry" using "appropriate scientific methodologies" that are not "primarily biological or genetic in reference" (American Anthropological Association, 1997 )

Possible quality management issues that may arise are that since people are in essence individuals and characterized by a plethora of both experiential as well as biological, sociological, historical, environmental, and so forth features, race may have little determination in the way that they act and respond to situations. An individual from one race, for instance, may have happened to have been born in that race but may look and act according to the stereotypical characteristics of another. When the concept of race is used strictly to record the quantity of people who were born to a certain category, this may not be problematic. However, when the U.S. Census -- or another division, uses race as construct to measure (for instance) intelligence, poverty, or some other circumstance, this may prove problematic since numerous other variables can interfere...

According to whose parentage or ancestry is race accorded -- the mother or the father, and individuals may come from extremely mixed racial / ethnic heritage. How does one, then, define the racial background of the individual? According to the majority race; or according to the parent's ethnicity?
Furthermore, the individual may have been born to an Indian (for instance) but adopted and brought up in a thorough Caucasian, Anglo-Saxon environment acquiring English education, habits, values, ways of thought etc. How would race then be an authentic pointer of his or her attitudes and so forth? The best we can do with it, in this situation, is point to biological mother or father whom the individual was born to but never met.

Reference

American Anthropological Association. (1997 ) "A Brief History of the OMB Directive 15." http://www.aaanet.org/gvt/ombdraft.htm

Banton, M. The Idiom of Race in Black, Les & John Solomos, 2009. Theories of Race and Racism, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.