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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7927247" data-attributes="member: 4937">We have to remember that the writers of D&D aren't the ones that heaped tons of connotations and ideas onto the word "race" since the time they chose it. It's perfectly valid English to speak of "the human race" to distinguish it from other sorts of animals. The word only means "having a common heritage/parentage".  (Not that there weren't plenty of ugly ideas associated with the word before hand, but let's not go there.)So, the human race, the dwarf race, the elf race, the goblin race are all perfectly valid constructions, and the choice of race even has some reasonableness to it. The word "species" carries with it a lot of scientific and biological baggage that is not meant to be implied as pertaining to a fantasy setting. In a scientific setting, it makes no sense for Spock to be "half Human and half Vulcan". As a "space elf", it is entirely within the archetype for Spock to be half-human and half Vulcan.Where you get in trouble is going from the idea that because you can interbreed Vulcans and humans, that there aren't profound biological differences between Vulcans and Humans which influence their emotional contexts, their culture, their lifestyles, their desires, and their behavior. You get into trouble when you assume, that if it looks human it probably is basically human, sans some minor irrelevant features like pointed ears that distinguish Vulcans from humans hardly more than one human is different than another. Thus you get the idea that a Vulcan raised by humans would basically be human, or a human raised by Vulcan would basically be Vulcan. Heck, even the initially unreflected on assumption that since Vulcans and Humans look alike they could interbreed, naturally, is part of this rather simplistic mindset. It's the same thing that puts mammary glands on Dragonborn, or gets you John Carter marrying an egg laying Martian Princess and having a child by her (though, to be fair, it's strongly hinted John Carter is not actually human).Point is, it's not incorrect to say that a green blooded Vulcan is essentially biologically different than a Human, and you are right that it is a bit of a categorical error to see that as being the same problem as human racism (human racial categories having a very weak biological basis).What I'm seeing is a cultural trend toward proclaiming that if two species have a clear biological difference, you are being racist.And since we are on the topic, real biological differences can lead to real alignment propensities.To lead off with a less explosive example, the dwarf alignment propensity to lawfulness and the elf alignment propensity to chaoticness are in my homebrew setting the very natural result of their respective biological differences.  They are not merely learned and chosen behaviors but innate and natural impulses of both species that are overcome only with difficulty.   While not every elf is chaotic, and not every dwarf is lawful, the vast majority of the two races act according to their biological imperatives.   In the case of elves, a lawfully structured society isn't even really possible for them.  If they collectively tried to do that, they'd probably just go extinct because it is so completely unsuited to their biology.</blockquote>

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