Race...Ethnicity...Continuum of Gender?

What is race? Initially, I thought race was a term used to describe the classification of humans into various groups based on their backgrounds. In part I was correct; however to my surprise, I was also relatively wrong. My teacher explained to us that race is a social construction, a classification based on superficial characteristics (i.e. skin color, eye shape, hair type etc.). Some examples of race would include Black, White/Caucasian, Asian and Aboriginal. But then I thought to myself, okay so if race is based on what you look like, then where does your background come into play? That’s when my teacher went on to explain what the term ethnicity meant. She explained it to be like groups of people (ex. Clans, tribes etc.) where people of that group share commonalities in things likes history, heritage, traits, nationality, ancestry, geographical location/region and allegiance. Now those definitions taught me that my way of thinking was wrong, but that wasn’t what surprised me the most. My teacher went on to explain how every section of classification is categorized. Now you’re probably thinking, how so? Well instead of trying to explain how I would like you to imagine it, just take a look at these two examples:

The first one being for gender and the second one for race, however there are many more ways to classify humans (ex. class, sexuality, religion etc.). This interested me because I never really thought of it like that; it didn’t occur to me that we categorize humans in every which way. And sadly, what all we feminists go against, is that the white straight biological male will always be the one on top, because that is considered “the norm” to society. Does this seem alright to you? Do you think we should continue to categorize people the way we do? Or conform to thinking that just because "it is the norm" that it can't be changed? To me, everyone should be equal. No matter what gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity or nationality you belong to. No one should have privilege just because there white. Or be without privilege because there "of-race". Why can't everyone just be equal on all levels?