The Artificial Construct

Webster's defines speciation as the process of biological species formation (I really hate when people define a word by using a root word, that's just dumb if I knew what the root of the word meant then wouldn't I know the meaning of the word, but I digress). Speciation put simply is the process by which new beings, breeds, species, etc. come into being due to an elongated separation and the subsequent adaptation to the surrounding area. This process is best seen in dogs, you have various dogs that are all descendants of one breed, but due to separation and necessity, each breed has adapted. You have the herding German Shepherd, the hunting Mastiff, and the "sight hound" Weimeraner. Now looking at dogs and thinking about all of the other animals that have changed to suit the environment, why is it that humans are the only one that make a big deal out of the by-product of speciation, race? No other "lower beings" walking or crawling the face of the Earth really care about the color, ethnicity, lineage, or anything else of a pack member or mate, but humans do. Why? Why is color so important? I feel like this, race is nothing more than an adjective. It doesn't decides who the person is, it decides what the person is. When picking a mate, it isn't going to be a beautiful, black man or woman that makes you happy it is going to be that person. Their race has nothing to do with it. Would you love or care about that person any less if their race were to change? Is race really as big of an issue as it is made? Or is it nothing more than "...an artificial construct..." that has been twisted and turned and now has ripped apart more lives and societies than anything else thanks to good ol' xenophobes?