[Jmenschenfresser]

is there any way to make it so you can get Racial techs with out having selecting it by modding the game somehow?

Yep. Just take out the racial number from the second step of tech.

For instance: Most of the racial techs have a single prereq like Crystallurgy or something. Then this opens Cyrstaline Weapons and Crystaline Technology. (The specifics here may be wrong). What you do is leave Crystallurgy a racial tech area, by leaving in the racial number. But you take the racial number out of Cyrstaline Weapons and Crystaline Technology.

What this does: You can't research any of them no matter what, but you can capture the weapon components or other things and analyze them.

Pretty sure that is how it works