>>23912375genetic differences are real, but superficial variation in skin tone, build, or facial features (sure, various susceptibility/resistance to disease/illness) as basis for categorization into 'races' is cultural and comes with more connotations (typically negative and typically exalting the superiority of the culture creating the categories) than simply genetic variation.
on the topic of empirical objectivity, the fundamental capacity for cognition slash being human is invariant across the species
everything else is a function of environment and how people adapt their culture to contend with that environment... and happenstance that some individuals within a group are more intelligent/insightful than usual and discover discoveries or invent inventions that confer a technological (cultural) advantage.
providing the greater society is receptive of course. read something that suggested ancient china very well could of realized /the industrial revolution/ and went on to colonize much of the world, but didn't because the organization of their culture meant that acceptance of technology was at the whims of an emperor (and fairly small group of advisors) AND there was a strong /inward/ focus (a theological line of reasoning and hierarchy justification prefixed on the notion that the middle kingdom was basically heaven and anything beyond was shit and not worth trifling with), so of course both these things, presenting a challenge to the hierarchy, were suppressed.
