I probably did come off as dismissive there, so I hope I can explain myself more clearly here.
I've read the rules, I'm not here to rant about "agendas" and "ideology" here because that stuff's dumb, but I think that if I believe that there are criticism of the setting that are inaccurate, then I can discuss respectfully about it, without calling anyone names or being called names. That too is in the name of letting more people and more ideas being allowed to express themselves in the space.
If I were too hasty in the way I worded that, I apologize.
This for instance I think is uncharitable.
I don't think it's fair that I'm indirectly accused of being a racist because I don't believe that the content inside the original Dark Sun publications contain anything that I could reasonably describe as "serious social problems". Quite the opposite, Dark Sun reads like a rather progressive piece with a love for edgy stuff too. The themes of racial strife are in the context of evil tyrants engaging in genocide, that the setting portrays as an extremely evil act that literally brought the world almost to dying outright, the slavery is depicted as massive social ill, the Muls are another depiction of the evil of the Sorcerer-Kings and how they created a whole race through eugenics just to get better slaves, and this obviously portrayed as more of them being evil and the Muls as characters who have a chance to redeem themselves from the condition forced on them by breaking free, and the cannibal halflings are not in reference to any real world culture and are just how some tribal groups have adapted to survive in an extremely harsh environment by eating everything who's not other halflings. The Thri-Kreen do the same stuff, they just look like bugs instead of small dudes, so I guess it feels more acceptable, but they too eat intelligent people.
I don't see "serious social issues" being promoted here, rather addressed, and I feel that the setting gets frequently misread on purpose in order to treat the stuff it treats as a topic like it's endorsing it.
I don't think they really are though.
They're halflings, who eat any living thing that's not their own because it's a harsh world outside. As far as I recall, they don't even eat each others, which means they aren't even really technically cannibals, we call them that because they still eat intelligent people of other races, but I guess that from their point of view outsiders are just a different kind of animal. I never heard anything that directly tried to connect them with any real world culture. "Pygmies" get referenced, but I don't think there's literally any similarity outside of the fact that both are considered short, which seems a really weak connection to me.
I mean, look at Warhammer's Pygmies (who are legit 100% based on racial caricatures, and you can tell immediately), and then look at Dark Sun's halflings, who just happen to have a generic tribal look (like a lot of other people), they're short (because they're just halflings) and they eat anything they can (which is also not something unique to them, and it's just part of Dark Sun's extreme emphasis on fighting for survival and pushing people to the extreme).
The mere idea of people-eating folks or creatures isn't racist. Otherwise most of the monster manual would be racist, which is a stupid thing to think. Or the Thri-Kreen as a I said above.
Also, it's just culture. There have been human cultures who have practiced various forms of cannibalism, usually always heavily ritualized and based on their understanding of religion and spirituality, and that didn't make them monsters or anything. It's just one among thousands of independently arising traits in cultures worldwide just like human sacrifice, slavery, and lots of other unpleasant stuff. By the way, when I'm writing this I'm thinking of Brazilian Tupi people, who historically practiced ritual cannibalism in a rather strict, ceremonial way, and these practices were usually misunderstood and exaggerated by the colonizers who just saw them as eating other people. Some cultures in Papua New Guinea also come to mind, and neither them or the Tupi seem to be referenced by Dark Sun in any direct or indirect way. Halflings in Dark Sun are just short tribal people who are really isolationist and eat anything they can, reasonably so given the conditions of the planet.
I don't think that whole aspects of our real human cultures should become untouchable subjects just because they can be interpreted in bad ways, it's unreasonable.
But what connotations are there with the Muls outside of the fact that the Sorcerer-Kings are evil bastards?
They are a slave race made by very evil people in a very evil way, and Muls in the settings are thus either enslaved and forced into a life of hardship or escape to find a new, proper way to figure out themselves away from their cruel masters.
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