I just want to point out that Half-Elves and Half-Orcs are not "removed from the game." Even only using these rules, you can still play them, and in fact you can play with other varieties of mixed heritage as well. I think this is one of the good changes in the rules, in terms of not making specific forms of mixed heritage somehow distinct from others.
Now, to get to the big problem here, as others pointed out, "the gods did it" is NOT a solution to racial essentialism, and in fact arguably makes it worse. "All Elves are trained in longswords as babies" is very stupid worldbuilding, but not necessarily racist. "The gods make all dwarves good stonecutters," OTOH, is at the very least, creating the potential for racist tropes to further permeate D&D fiction. They basically made the worst choice possible in trying to have their cake and eat it too, now not only are cultural traits universal, but they're divinely mandated! Horrible stuff, and I hope they listen sincerely to feedback on this.
What they should do, IMO, is separate the cultural traits entirely and put them into Background. Eliminate lineages entirely and change them into "Cultures" that any race can choose. Now obviously there can be some traits that come from the racial background: senses, appearance, dragonbreath, lifespan, trance, etc. but racial attributes should be limited solely to the physical. Now if you want to run a game where a human grows up in an Elven culture but some Elves think he's an inferior Elf, that's your choice, but that shouldn't be the position endorsed by the game's creators.
