When I was young, my progressive, well-meaning parents taught me that I should be color-blind and not see race or gender, thinking that a generation of such people would naturally make a world with more equality of opportunity.
The problem is that that didn't work. All it did was create a generation of people who were illiterate in regards to the impacts of race and gender discrimination. It created a blind spot where those who wanted to discriminate could hide.
Data shows that race and gender have wide reaching impacts on one's ability to access services including education and healthcare, interactions with the justice system, and employment. The sad truth is that categories of race and gender have an outsized impact on your prospects and people have always been defined by them in this country.
In some sense, the earlier campaigns were successful--most people agree that overt segregation and discrimination are a bad thing. That's huge progress. But since we have mostly ceased practicing overt forms of discrimination, how is it that these disparities persist? There are two options either there are unconscious and unintentional biases that have a significant impact or the lingering side effects of discrimination keep historically marginalized groups at a significant disadvantage. (I think both cases are true, but that doesn't impact my argument.)
If we want to understand why we have these disparate outcomes, we have to pay attention to race and gender and how we behave in relation these categories. Only by doing so can we hope to resolve the underlying issues that drive social imbalance.
If you want to learn more about this from someone far, far more expert on the topic than myself, I recommend listening to some interviews with or articles by Ibram X. Kendi. His work is insightful and accessible.