Remember when we called factions races in GC2? That was not a great idea. The term has been used in science fiction for species, and it is firmly ensconced in the popular tabletop game StarFleet Battles (which once proposed a supplement called Race War!). I think abandoning it for GC3 was a good idea (changing 'jewels' to 'components' was also good). It wasn't necessarily politically corrrect so much as factually correct to do so.

From a scientific standpoint, a 'race' is usually regarded as a part of a species, not a species, and certainly not a government. Many user-generated factions (and two official ones) are members of the same species (some hairless milksucker from a dirtball at the hind-end of space), and some are composed of more than one species. So the use of the term previously was inaccurate from a scientific standpoint. Race is also a bit of an difficult word for science, since the meaning has historically been fluid, and of course the word is loaded with cultural baggage. You don't hear it used much; I've mostly encountered it in older publications, although it may persist in some subdisciplines today.

Obviously, the social, cultural, and political ramifications of the word are even more complex and contentious. I don't think we should go there. However, I don't mind role-playing a little, er, speciesism, as I play. Heck, you can't play the Drengin without it, in my opinion. If anyone has any speciesist slurs from GC3 they like to use, feel free to share, only please: 

1. Keep it clean (ish): censor profanity, use proper anatomical terminology, etc. Examples: "Cardassians are vagina-foreheads," the Yor are "Computer ****ers."
2. Keep it free of human racism. No example needed, just google it and be horrified.
3. Keep it on topic (GC3 races and commonly known non-official races). Bad example: "Klingons are elevator-farters."