Pretty much, Grey... When talking about fantasy peoples in worlds like the forgotten realms, and dealing with multiple extremely different yet still fully sapient and civilised peoples, race can definitely be seen as something of a misnomer; from our perspective, in a world where most sapient creatures are just humans and more humans, we analogue what we see in fantasy to 'race' very easily, but if we look at it from an outside perspective, completely analytically, we'd almost certainly categorise it as species instead... we're literally dealing with completely different orders of creatures here, from a biological/science perspective, and humans are just one of many varied and different others.
Charisma is very definitely the most frequently misconstrued and fuzzy ability score in the history of the game. I find it's easiest to think of it as force of presence; not specifically talking well, or looking good, or looking scary, or any one of those things, but more subtly the force of presence and personal gravitas that an individual has - even then, yeah, a lot of that is going to seem more learned or practice, or part of nurture, rather than nature... but I suppose you look to thinks like the innate majesty of dragons, and so on. The reason, in the end, why certain races get it and others don't, is just unfortunately down to mechanics and balance, since some races are getting other scores instead which were deemed 'more' appropriate for them than charisma... it's not a satisfying answer, I know.
Recall also that it represents force of will as well; it's sort of the 'flip side' to wisdom, when it comes to mental defences. Spells that affect you subtly, like charms, are saved against with Wisdom, as your mind realises it's being manipulated and can easily shake it off once it has. Other spells that are more direct assaults are (or were intended to be originally at the beginning of 5e), the domain of Charisma - where you know your sense of self or will is being clearly assaulted and you have to hold onto yourself through it. Spells that muddles your wits, confused or disoriented you or interfered with memory or information recall were intended to be the domain of Intelligence saves. Unfortunately, in the design stages, coming off the legacy of having so much already ingrained from older editions as just 'will saves' - *most* of it all became wisdom saves when some of it shouldn't have, just because that was what was felt to be more familiar to more people. WE still have some of the intent though - Spaces that try to exclude you from entering, or reject your presence are still saved against with Charisma as you force your absolute presence of self. If two individuals are fighting to shape a dream space, it will be a Charisma contest. Dominate spells were 'meant' to be Charisma saves too, since they are more overt attacks and controls, while charms, as wisdom, are subtle... while more recent spells have started trying to correct the wisdom-dominated mental saves that we have, it's still mostly carried by wisdom, when a lot of it shouldn't be. Oh well. Sorry for the tangent ^.^
