This is a New York Times article by David Reich in 2018. This can be a taboo subject of course, but I think it is useful to know some facts on what the key studies have been and how serious scientists think about it. As Reich points out, because it is a taboo subject, serious scientists self-censor to an extent and this creates a vacuum where un-serious and ill-intentioned people step in. So here are some facts:

• A key genetic study was done in 1972 by Richard Lewontin. He concluded that about 85% of human genetic variation is explained by differences in individuals and 15% by ancestral, aka racial, categories (which he created, resulting in a slightly circular logic). The categories he chose were “West Eurasians, Africans, East Asians, South Asians, Native Americans, Oceanians and Australians”. Without digging into the paper, I imagine he tinkered with these categories to make the proportion of variation explained by the categories as large as possible, and this is what he came up with.
• That study become the basis of a broad consensus that the term “race” has no real biological meaning, and is therefore a “social construct”.
• Reich goes on to argue that even though race is a social construct, it is useful because the race that a person self-identifies as is correlated to certain genes, which in turn are predictive of the risk of certain diseases. So, it makes complete sense for doctors to use a person’s self-identified race as part of health screening. [At least until we just all get our genome sequenced and stored in a medical records?]
• Reich then goes into the taboos against, and some studies that have dared nonetheless, the delve into correlations between genes, behavior and “cognition”. He doesn’t use the term “intelligence” by itself, but rather “performance on intelligence tests”. [To me though, the examples he gives all seem very marginal, such as a study of people in Iceland showing that certain genes are correlated with years of educational attainment. How well can we truly control for all the factors other than genetics that affect this?]
• Reich points to an interesting study of the ancestry of modern western Europeans (aka “white people”). They (we) are a mix of ancient middle eastern farmers, western European hunter-gatherers (sometimes called “barbarians”?), and people of Asian ancestry from the Siberian steppes. One interesting thing is that those people from the Eurasian steppes have some genetic similarities to Native Americans. So if a white North American has their DNA sequenced and finds some Native American ancestry, that could have happened in North America in the last 500 years or so, or in Europe a lot longer ago.

I’m not sure I have great words of wisdom to end this one with. Continuing to study the genetic basis of disease seems like a good idea. Trying to link “race” to “intelligence” seems like a waste since neither of these concepts is clearly defined, and even if they ever are, most peoples’ failure to live up to their innate potential is going to be due to factors other than genetics. “Highly intelligent” people who can beat me easily at checkers are not much use to society if they fall for obvious lies and logical fallacies coming from politicians and advertisers. In fact, they are a danger to society. So we need to focus on removing barriers that prevent people from living up to their potential.