songlark, let me show you why it is wrong for someone to mention ethnicity when it is not relevant.
I was on the bus the other day and a white woman came and sat next to me, I think she was british. We talked about the weather and then an able bodied man boarded the bus and he sat opposite us. He was wearing a hat.
If that sounds really weird and you're thinking well, why would anyone say that? What on earth does their whiteness, britishness or able bodied ness have to do with the story?
But if you say I was on the bus the other day and a black woman came and sat next to me, I think she was Ugandan. We talked about the weather and then a disabled man boarded the bus and he sat opposite us He was wearing a hat.
Then you will be hearing the totally irrelevant ethnic or disability detail that is inserted into conversations day in day out. And many people won't think anything at all of it. They were only saying, what's the big deal?
Well, the big deal is that it is not a required detail of the story, without which the story cannot be explained (if you were describing a crime and the person you saw running away, then such things would be required).
In this case, was the OP attributing the behaviour to the other woman's ethnicity? If not, how was it relevant? What did the repeated detail of her ethnicity add to the story or our understanding of it? I have read many, many posts on here about interactions between several women. We get woman A, woman B, woman C. We get "I'll call them Barbara and Jean". What we don't get is White Mum and Mum.
But the really big deal is that it's not seen as a big deal.