The older African American gentlemen that I know are more courteous than the average person. If conveying that is the purpose of including those details, it is relevant to the story. Identifying a person's race is not always or even usually a negative thing. It is reverse discrimination when it becomes politically incorrect to say a black person is black, or a Muslim is a Muslim, or Jewish, or a Pigmy as though there was something so wrong with being any of these that it shouldn't be mentioned.