It was a racist comment. As for the “genetic disadvantage”, I’d consider the realities of participation…in America, at least, even the most gifted whites don’t participate in sprinting because of this suppossed inability to compete.
At my high school pretty much every black kid was strongly encouraged/virtually recruited to run the sprints. The white kids, on the other hand, no matter how perfectly suited for sprinting they appeared were either ignored or told to try shot put or decathlon (even if they had ridiculously low body fat percentage, great strenght to body weight ratio, high cut calves etc.). This happens all over the country. How many of the best white athletes that you know even tried sprinting?