Understanding the mythic origins of some of D&D creatures is a good thing, many of us got into the hobby after discovering a fascination with myth and folklore. But "no connection" to modern day cultural concerns? BS.
D&D has racism problems. Full stop. The broader fantasy genre has racism problems. D&D pulled from the fantasy literature of the time, and from (mostly) European myth and folklore, which has racism problems . . . D&D's problem with racism goes all the way back to it's source material. That's not to say that D&D's illustrious creators and early designers were racist themselves, just not fully aware of the racist tropes already existing in literature, myth, and folklore. Society has had a lot of conversations around these issues in recent decades, and we've been able to share these discussions like never before due to social media. We've been talking about these issues on the ENWorld board intensely over the past year or so . . . . although none of these concerns are truly new to the game, hobby, or genre.
While we're mostly talking about the drow in this thread, this discussion applies to almost every "bad guy" race in D&D's history, even the "good guy" races. The drow are a classic creation from the game's early days and have been fan-favorite antagonists for decades for good reason. The fact that they are inspired by Norse mythology adds to their "heft" as D&D antagonists. But that doesn't erase the extremely problematic issues with evil-being-black that the drow have, ESPECIALLY because it comes from earlier folkloric sources.
So, do we need to assign blame and point fingers at the early designers and creators of D&D? No, of course not. Do we "erase" this classic group from D&D's the current game? We could, but I think that would be a mistake.
So, what do we do? We can take a look at other genre properties with similar issues and see how they handled it . . . . I like looking at the Klingons from Star Trek. A sci-fi race with similar problems to the drow . . . evil, swarthy villains to the (mostly) white Federation heroes. Their portrayal has changed and grown significantly since Kirk's days, both visually and their culture and nuance has broadened significantly. Klingons in current Trek lore have a diverse culture (although, arguably, not yet diverse enough), and a diverse ethnic look to the various Klingons portrayed onscreen. This hasn't been without controversy over the years, of course.
Can we start portraying drow in D&D as a race/species with broader, more nuanced, and more diverse culture? Beyond just worshipping other evil deities? Beyond just having the occasional "rebel" against Lolth? Can we depict them visually with more diverse skin tones and other physical features, diversifying the ethnicity of the race? Love it or hate it, that's what WotC is slowly and haphazardly doing. Not erasing the classic drow portrayal, but broadening it so that we don't have the evil-black-race anymore.
Even within classic Lolth-worshipping, matriarchal drow culture . . . can the Lolth-worshippers simply be the dominant faction within the drow city (Menzoberranzan, Erehli-Cinlu)? Can the "common drow" be more of a neutral outlook, just trying to survive in a harsh culture? Can there be dark-skinned drow, who aren't rebels against their entire species, but opposed to the Church of Lolth and her evil priestesses?
We can have our cake and eat it too. We can keep the classic villainous drow, dark-skin and all, but we can have all of the above too. D&D needs evil antagonists . . . but we don't need reductive stereotypes that cast an entire race or species as evil.
