I don't know what's right or wrong in this situation.
This alone has a lot to unpack. You don't know the difference between "right" and "wrong"? Or you don't know how to decouple or transcend the Post-Modern mechanic of viewing things from your eyes. This is not to say there is no value to holding opposites in tension with one another to suss out nuanced values. The problem that most people have with it - is lack of context with the values themselves and what their intrinsic properties are in proportion to *everything else*.
This creates what is known as the "pre-trans" fallacy. Where ones will conflate a lesser value (relatively outlier) to a higher value (relatively normative), or take a higher value (relatively normative) and deflate it down to the lesser value (relatively outlier). For those that *can't* see this fallacy in play, it blinds you to the differences between the two positions entirely.
SJW's are cultists that have been consumed by this fallacy and now operate directly from it. So nothing ultimately has a value - because everything gets reduced to one thing: power. They've invented an entire language around it, created definitions that go directly against reality to justify itself in a gross solipsism.
There is *nothing* that can't be reduced do meaninglessness by pathological post-modernism, because it is largely not self-aware of anything other than what is directly in front of its face.
That's precisely how one is unable to know "right from wrong" - because you're unable to determine contextually outside of the Post-Modern (pathological variety) the values of the things you're looking at.
Your solution is to go back to formula and start asking yourself basic questions like the Greeks did: Competing virtues. Taxonomy of ethics (Greater good principles vs. individual liberty). etc. You're staring at the bark of the tree in a massive jungle of greater things.
I don't think orcs are racist. They're bags of XP and loots that PCs are expected to slaughter in order to advance. That's how the game works. Nobody wants to get bogged down in pointless debates about whether it's moral to kill an imaginary game construct.
But that is precisely what the problem is. Just like you're saying "no one wants to get bogged down in pointless debates on the morality of "killing imaginary game constructs" - the construct of calling someone a racist because of their creation of something imaginary is EQUALLY a projection of the imagination. NO ONE DIES/IS RAPED/ENSLAVED/<fill in immoral/unethical act of choice> in a work of fiction. Removing that reality and projecting your belief that engaging in such fictions imparts actionable beliefs on behalf of the people engaging and creating these things is UNETHICAL and illogical. Because where it might happen are extreme outliers at best. Conflating an outlier to be "normal" is the very problem.I do think that some descriptions of orcs can resemble colonialist and racist propaganda used in real history to justify genocide. Some people find that, if not offensive, then really disturbing? I saw these parallels once they were explained to me and I can't very well unsee them.
Your very terminology begs for debate. It reeks of unspoken claims. Allow me to give you an example..
Without "colonialism" I would probably be a grass-skirt wearing, bone-in-the-nose headhunter. Because of colonialism - I'm a very well-to-do, educated, father, philosopher, husband, writer, with a strong ethical and moral compass that is utterly humbled by the expanse of history not just of my own material culture (filipino) but I'm *staggered* by the emergent qualities of Greco-Roman culture which has given me most of the tools I use today to navigate reality.
And I see people born to this culture - that are blind to the monumental fragile struggles that could have derailed all of this that go us here, so they can wring their hands over culturally relative issues in the past they refuse to look at in context.
No, the propaganda is one of your own making. Not of historical reality. Any black American can go back to Africa if they really wanted to. There is a damn good reason why they don't (and conversely since you like to play around with the Post-Modernist mechanism) why Africans largely want to come *here*.
But outside of that hubpages post, I never heard any anecdotes about parties going on genuine genocide sprees against orc villages. That seems more like a joke in D&D-based web shows or an abstract example used in nerdy philosophical debates than an actual thing that happens at gaming tables.
I've made many references in posts about what I've allowed in my campaigns - Genocide is on that list *every time* because it's happened in my campaigns (2.1 million drow dead via biological warfare and forced volcano-explosion in the Underdark! alongside the death of several hundred-thousand mountain dwarves). At the hands of the PC's decisions ultimately. That counts as genocide. Was it intended? No - but it was emergent do the context and circumstances of the game. There is nothing philosophical about the discussion of it - because I don't prohibit my players from doing anything in the game. Are their repercussions? *of course* that's called "The Game".
And no one in my gaming group has ever advocated the genocide of another race. Or raped anyone. Or enslaved anyone. Or murdered anyone. You'd think after 40+ years of GMing I'd get at least ONE murderer based on your concerns... alas I haven't rolled my Natural 20 on that one yet.
As far as I've heard, orcs only exist as evil raiders and dungeon squatting bandits to be killed for XP and loot. They don't have any society or infrastructure, never onscreen anyhow. Who wants to kill orc villages, anyway? I've never heard of any DM expecting their players to butcher villages.
/Shrug. Me either. But yet "savagery" has a meaning that doesn't necessarily tie it to a specific culture. And there are plenty of historical examples of "civilized" people resorting to the same tactics in order to combat "savagery". That Orcs, who almost by definition in D&D and most fictional representations ARE savage... they will have behaviors that are associated with primitive cultures that most violent primitive cultures share. If someone wants to draw upon real world examples of such behaviors - it's not hard. That doesn't mean Orcs are black people. If YOU want to believe that, then it's on you.
It's a nerd argument that I like picking at because I'm autistic and bored, not because I'm a lunatic who thinks anybody who plays WarCraft is a racist.
Well I hope you're not bored with me. That would be insulting.