The designer races that are part-Dragon, part-Demon, yadda, yadda -- now those are monsters to me. That's just my opinion, of course. No offense intended for those who like that kind of thing.
I liked Tieflings in AD&D, in
Planescape, when they were all unique individuals and orphans of unknown lineage. I like them a lot less now that they have been rigidly defined, homogenized, given a homeland and shoehorned into every other setting.
I don't mind monster PCs in my games, and I'm bored to death of the Tolkien Trio, but the
important thing-- to my way of thinking-- is that whatever races are playable in a setting
belong to that setting and have an intentional place in it.
For instance, I'm a
Spelljammer guy. When I run
Spelljammer, like I'm running it now, I use all of the standard PHB races-- even though I
haaate the ones with "half" in their name-- plus the Gith races, Thri-Kreen/Xixchil, the Giff, either Lizardfolk or Tortle, plus I'm pretty flexible about anything else from
Complete Humanoids or
Complete Spacefarer's that players are keen on. All of them have a purpose, and there's deliberately a
whole bunch of them because there's a whole bunch of planets for them to come from.
My
Shroompunk setting? The only PHB race is Human. Again, I have a bunch of races-- again, they're from a bunch of Worlds-- but the main races are "Tortles", "Warforged", Vanaras, Kobolds, Dromites, Ratfolk/Mouselings, maybe Scyleens (psychic octopus women from Fat Goblin), maybe Hobgoblin/Ogre Magi, maybe some kind of fairied up Elfs. Because my Appendix N isn't Tolkien and Howard, it's Nintendo and Mattel.