Do you think maybe being from "one of the whitest states" is why the people you know still track their descent so carefully? I've lived all over North America, and your experience definitely doesn't match up with anywhere I've lived. Which is not to invalidate your experience, but I would strongly caution you against assuming it's the norm. Most people I knew when I was still in the US pretty much settled on a color or just plain "American" for anything past about the third generation.
Using a color descriptor like "white" or "black" isn't inherently racist for those who don't care so much about which boats all our very distant relatives were on hundreds of years ago, and it definitely doesn't preclude empathy for those who are different from us.