Dwarves aren't cool anymore

[Dr.Samurai]

Not "orcs believe"; some orcs believe. Not "drow embrace"; some drow embrace.

Why is that qualifier so easy to add with dwarves (e.g. some dwarves are evil) but so seemingly hard to add to orcs and drow?

I think everyone else saw the qualifier.

Evil creator deities are neither infallible nor omnipotent.

They're also not impotent and have actual power and influence in the world.

Sure, they want their creations to be mindless footsoldiers universally following and perpetuating their designs, but they failed at that objective...

No one said mindless. And they haven't failed. Hence why orcs and elves are sworn enemies, and drow are evil as well, and dwarves do battle with goblins and giants, and gnomes with kobolds, etc.

Modern players appear to want to strip the lore of the creatures in D&D, and strip the power of their deities to influence them. Let's remove any sort of external pressure on them so we can just throw our hands up and say "they're basically just humans".

All the classic fantasy races are pseudo-humans.

Here we come full circle.

I am not sure what is being complained about, these qualifiers have existed since AD&D for all of them.

I mean it was a joke in 3rd that evil drow aren't even a thing anymore they are all chaotic good rebels against there evil kin. This isn't a new idea.

Indeed. Here is an article from Greyhawk Grognard explaining the first non-evil drow. Notice Gygax's language indicating that most (meaning drow) in the place are "evil to the core". Paints quite a different picture than the insistence to say "some" as opposed to "basically all" and "figuratively all".

There was also an AD&D adventure called Things That Go Bump in the Night, where firbolgs are causing a ruckus in the woods because they've been displaced by a witch. And who is that witch? A misunderstood elf named Lady Alshria Ulgeranod, a renegade drow that "left her wealthy lifestyle and her people after she became disgusted with the wickedness and depravity of drow culture".

These exceptions have always existed, but they've always been exceptions.

The popularity of Drizz't alone should indicate that there is something compelling about this. Drow are iconic because of how evil and depraved they are, not because they're just like any other elf variant.

Some elves are evil. Like Drow

1st Ed Unearthed Arcana gave us the first real rules for Drow and Duergar and said that most were evil and PCs could be of any alignment (it actually went so far as to say the Duergar were LE with Neutral tendencies and that Drow PCs were likely outcasts). Years before Drizzt was a name in publication, we were already playing rebel Drow who were breaking the evil mold. That said, being a rebel only has impact if there's something to rebel against.

Indeed.

It becomes easier to understand once you remember culture is not independent of biology - culture is byproduct of biology and environment. Humans paint with certain subset of colors because those are what our eyes can see; we make music using certain frequencies of sound because those are what our ears can hear; we communicate by sound because the structure of our lungs and throat allow for it; we can form language of those sounds because our nervous system is set up in a specific way, with flaw in one gene enough to significantly reduce that ability. This extends to anything you could consider moral behaviour - evolution and genetics of altruism, for example, are existing topics of study.

So it isn't particularly big leap to posit that someone's morally wrong behaviour is due to something being biologically wrong with them. Again, we can already show this to be true to some extent within humans - for example, anti-social disorder, associated with impulsive, manipulative, dishonest and violent behaviour, correlates with reduced grey matter in the frontal cortex and is estimated to be 50% genetic.

It's worth noting that the "beauty is good, ugliness is bad" trope is a primitive expression of the same idea. It's been theorized to stem from natural fear of infectious diseases. As in, people naturally think of moral evil in terms of sickness, and hence visible signs of natural evil (sickness) become perceived as signs of moral evil also. They can be further linked by belief that the visible physical illness is divine punishment for the invisible moral illness - relevant to fantasy games because in fantasy, it can be literally true.

I am thankful that my tables have no interest in getting this granular over this and we are able to enjoy the game without having to explain it so that it simulates real life to this degree.