On one hand, the article does make a pretty decent point. Humans are depicted as having this broad range of behaviours and cultures while non-humans are slotted into some pretty narrow definitions. And, the published settings follow this. Take halflings for example. There are cannibal halflings in Dark Sun, klepto Kender in Dragonlance, fairly stock Tolkien in Greyhawk, dino riding plains halflings in Eberron and riverboat people in 4e.
I'm inclined to give the authors the benefit of the doubt and imagine that this was done for pragmatic reasons rather than a failure of imagination. The author of a fantasy setting has some obligation to make an imaginary race distinctive so that it doesn't just appear to be a human with bumps on their head or a funny hairdo. This is initially going to be done by presenting a representative type. Often in a story there is room for exploring only one member of the whole species, so even if the type isn't representative it becomes the representative type.
And the author of an RPG has some obligation to give some understandable guidelines for how a member of a particular race differs in characterization from all the others. This almost by necessity means that at least initially you present a sterotype.
Yet, you don't have a single setting (that I can think of) where you get all of those.
The good news is that as new sterotypes are introduced, they tend to get incorporated into that races pallette of cultures, so that eventually childish tricksters and wild-haired cannibals becomes part of the range of what you think of for 'halflings'.
Yet, the humans in every one of those settings can be from any number of cultures and backgrounds from city dwelling aristocrats to jungle dwelling tribesmen.
Authors presenting human cultures tend to have a much easier go of it by drawing on existing stock sterotypes and historical periods. This land is meant to be Arthurian British, another Reinassance Italian, another one the Khannate of the Golden Horde, another is a blush on Merovingian france, and so forth. The number of truly original human cultures is usually quite small, and often of the sort of simple idea that can be summed up in a single sentence like, "Ruled by evil necromancers."
Or, look at the gods for the various races. While elves might have half a dozen gods once you get past core, in 3e, you had about a dozen human gods and then one god for each race - at least in core. That says an awful lot right there about how non-humans are viewed in the game. Humans have rich, full pantheons. Non-humans get one main god and maybe a couple of minor ones in some splatbook somewhere.
As with the races, so with the gods. At first, in 1e you had but one deity per demihuman race. It was implied that a pantheon existed in some cases, but it wasn't explored. Gradually the pantheon became richer and more well rounded as space and time allowed for more invention.
However, that all being said, there is something that should be remembered. When you have the existence of those gods in a setting, suddenly the whole nature vs nurture debate becomes rather moot. Orcs aren't that way because of genetics or how they're raised, they're that way because they were CREATED that way.
Well, not necessarily. You don't have to leave the debate as settled as all that. For one thing, you might read my earlier lecture on the genetic history of humanity and imagine that you understand my real opinion. I assure you that you probably don't. I'm not so easily pegged down either. For another, consider the situation in my homebrew.
The six mortal races (goblins, elves, humans, orine, dwarves, and idreth) were created after the first godswar to be playthings for their amusement. The six divine families wanted to make a weak servitor after the likeness of the faerie creatures but if anything lesser in stature. However, they couldn't agree to a single design, so they comprimised by allowing heads of the six households to each submit a design. To make the game more interesting, they agreed that the six races they created should be allowed the freedom to choose which gods to serve. Things seemed to go rather well at first. The gods new playthings were very amusing and the game gave the gods an excuse not to wreck their vengence directly on each other or threaten the very existance of the world. However, it wasn't very long before the gods noticed that something had gone very wrong. Exactly what went wrong even the gods aren't sure (or if they know, they aren't saying), but it became noticed that the mortals were exceeding the authority and stature that the gods had limited them to. They were excelling and becoming mighty, almost to the point of being a threat even to the gods. This was a thing unheard of, because the mortals multiplied in number and increased in stature and were drawing power from some source other than the gods own power. At one point (the Iconoclasm) the gods nearly lost control of the game. Since that time they've been more careful, but the wise know now that the gods have made something which is outside of their full control. They made it, but they do not understand it nor are they fully in control of it. Since there is something at work beyond the design of the gods, the destiny of the mortals is therefore truly in their own hands.
On the flipside, I'm not sure how you could fix this without making the PHB about ten thousand pages long. Players need some sort of hook to base a character on, and having a particular race be a particular way does provide that rather well.
I really see only two possible designs. One like we have gives you some guidance and tinkers with the math as we are used to. The other lets you design whatever you want and slap a race label on it. In this latter case though, you've trade 'racial essentialism' for the claim that every race is deep down the same on the inside. I think simple biology ought to be enough to convict that position as nonsense.
If I had to make a complaint against the typical fantasy races it is that there biology is so much alike, that its no wonder that their cultures are nearly the same. When everyone has basically a human body, human lifecycle, and human mind, then it would be surprising if the range of non-human cultures fell far outside the range of human cultures. The differences aren't very extreme, nor do I think that fantasy authors do a very good job of heightening them for inspection.
I'll be over here sitting on the fence.
'I don't know' is one of the wisest things anyone can say. Just be careful to say it out of true ignorance, and not out of cowardice.
