Is "race" a useful marker?

     Recently, I read a blog comment from a reader identified as "blackmamba".  The expression was forthright and lucid. It offered that:

There is only one multi-ethnic multi-colored multi-national, multi-faith, species whose origins trace to Africa 300, 000 years ago. What we call race is an evolutionary fit pigmented response to varying levels of solar radiation at altitudes and latitudes primarily related to the production of Vitamin D adapted to protect genes from damaging mutations. As such, we are all African primate apes driven to crave fat, salt, sugar, habitat, water, sex and kin by any means necessary including conflict and cooperation. 

     The conclusion that "race" is just about "pigment" is counter-productive in societies ongoing effort to achieve "equality of opportunity" across the species.  When we spin gender and race as irrelevant, we just confuse half of the species and piss-off the other half.  Few familiar with the NFL, the PGA, the Spelling Bee,  etc., believe this simplistic assessment, and certainly their complex structures seem to be  "evolutionary fit".