I think I'll repost here what I already wrote, cleaned up a bit:
In our reality only human beings are intelligent and advanced. A fantasy world often has a lot more races and cultures - and this means that the "racism" problem is both compounded and, as a result, more complex. For starters.
Yes, true "racism" can very well exist in such a world - but as an encompassing concept involving all races. White men can be racist towards black men. Sun elves can be racist towards Wood Elves. And "Red Hand Tribe" Orcs can be racist towards all other "inferior" tribes. And then you can have "true interracial racism" between, for example, Elves and Dwarves. You simply can't do a 1:1 comparison between Earth and a world of multiple sentient beings.
Orcs, BTW, are judged "Chaotic Evil" due to their behaviour relative to a human-centric concept of "neutrality", not as a racist label (and a simple check on The Monster Manual shows how they are defined "(Often) Chaotic Evil", not always. In The Forgotten Realms you can find Good aligned Orcs, followers of Eldath).
In Dungeons & Dragons Orcs developed they culture according to their natural characteristics: they are neither intelligent nor wise but they are very strong. Their natural desire of survival as a species depends, as with any other species, from using their strengths and avoiding their weaknesses. To our neutral-aligned human they look evil and chaotic - because they survive by expanding by force, and because "laws" require both wisdom and intelligence. In the Orc culture the strongest win - laws, respect and enduring social order be damned.
Once you grasp this, it becomes easy to see how Orcs can "choose" just fine what to do! Within their cultural upbring of course, they psychophysical nature and their understanding of how the World works. They can have heroes and cowards. They can debate about the best way to face a crisis. An Orc character (both player and non-player) can be interesting thanks to his personal pursuit to go "beyond" the established status quo of his tribe/race. All the things considered "missing" by EC are actually already present, clearly spelled in the MM.
How EC fumbled something so simple is beyond me.