In say the American context race does basically match ancestral origin in the first approximation. Say African Americans are a hybrid population of West Africans and North-Western Europeans. Or for example European Americans are mostly North Western Europeans mixed in with a bit of Southern and Eastern European. The Hispanic category (which isn't even a race) is basically an euphemism for Mexican American (who the majority of US Hispanics are) which is because of economic differences between Mexico and the US and the pattern of migration basically a euphemism for Mestizo (which as a European-Native American hybrid population with a relatively uniform amount of admixture does make sense as a biological entity).

Not only that, those who have older roots on the continent may have gone through common selective pressures. To quote Gregory Cochran

Amish in Lancaster County, Ashkenazi Jews as a merchant/scribe caste, Tibetans & altitude, pastoralists and lactase tolerance, hunter-gatherers -> peasants : every significant, lasting ecological change creates an altered human population, different in both body and mind.