If one is examining D&D and fantasy tropes in the context of society's attitudes towards race at large, as well as Tolkien's cultural milieu

> If you read Tolkein, it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that the tall pale people from the north are good and the dark ugly people from the south are bad. This reproduces the attitudes of the colonial era in which Tolkein came of age and its one of the worst aspects of his legacy (and that of many other contemporary and prior fantasy writers).

It seems rather par for the course. And it makes sense. In both fantasy and sci-fi, inhuman species are often caricatured by their "race" and usually don't get enough time to flesh out three-dimensional characters. Because it's hard to imagine completely alien societies with personalities that span as full as range as humanity's.