I've been thinking about this for a bit.  I think in most if not all cases Race, Background, and probably even class levels can be treated as feats.

With no race, human becomes a feat that reads like this:

• Your ability scores each increase by 1.
• Your size is medium.
• Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
• You can read speak and write 3 languages of your choice.
• You can choose one background feat of your choice.

The soldier background feat reads like this:

• You gain proficiency in Athletics and Intimidation.
• You gain proficiency in one type of gaming set of your choice.
• You gain proficiency in vehicles (land).
• You gain the feature: Military Rank 
• Choose one specialty from the special table or define your own.
• Chose your characteristics (this is almost mechanically irrelevant)

The rules character building rules change to:

• Choose one race feat and one background feat at level 1.

Mechanically then, all races, backgrounds, and class levels (!), just become collections of features.  I suppose all weapons and magical items become collections of features as well.

Sorry for using this as a place to write down an epiphany, but it seemed like as good of a place as any to do so.

Thinking sideways is always good, you never know where/when the next great idea will come up.

I would counter that, since you can only pick a "Race" once, it would be odd to have it with Feats, but to your point races already are like feats, it's just that you choose them at the beginning. Perhaps if only to make the character creation process smooth, it's better to keep them at the beginning and not as feats? You kind of need to choose your race up front, and if it was a feat, but you don't choose feats at the same time, you'd be jumping back and forth?

You could, however, add racial feats. Feats that make you a better human, or dwarf, etc. They would live in the feats section, just like in 3.5.

I'm just thinking really, every race, class level, feat, background, and spell is a collection of features.  Caveat is that a spell is more like a single feature.

What differentiates them is the rules that are used to apply them to a character.  

Well, there's always the method of point buy for everything. Take every race ability, class ability, feat, skill, background feature, and give them all point values. Each player starts with a pool of points that depends on how weak or powerful you want the game to be. The player builds their character a la cart out of everything available in the PHB. When you gain a level you get more points to spend.

I'm not talking about changing anything, just the way that it's visualized.

I understand. Just "epiphanizing" with you. :-)