>I am confused with this. Let us suppose I wish to identify the person, and only what I know of him that hi is white or black (like in the example provided "Make sure that black man ..."), then what should I use instead of color? Whether, say, "African-American" will represent the different meaning and then it will not bring any sense of racism?

If you're using the color simply to identify someone, it's not racist. For example, there are a bunch of people waiting for service and you're asked who's next. But the example I was responding to had no need for color to be an issue.

Tamar