Drow: Why They Gotta Be Black?

So I’ve been thinking a lot about Dungeons and Dragons lately--specifically its racial divisions and the alignments associated with those divisions.

Drow, for instance, are an Always Chaotic Evil race, sprung from the beautiful, ethereal, usually Neutral Good High Elves. The Drow themselves are black. Like, literally dark as the night sky, not dark brown. And they are associated with the dark, evil corners of the world, and especially with a cannibalistic spider goddess.

As you do.

Of course, the alignments and stories associated with Drow vary from campaign to campaign, and can be edited as the story they are a part of needs--but this description of them as evil, twisted creatures, along with their appearances, is the default present in the majority of game guides and handbooks. Also, because it is their distinguishing feature, their appearances are fairly constant from story to story. So in the vast majority of official game materials, a major Evil race is literally black.

Similarly, the Orcs are a race of sort-of humans who worship a cruel god and are more monster than human in appearance, though, again--dark, gray-green skin. They are also Always Chaotic Evil, though again this depends on story/campaign. Unlike Drow, however, Orcs have a specifically-noted crossbreed with humans, which results in a more human appearance and also--guess what--pale green skin. Half-Orcs are noted to be more variable in alignment, presumably due to the human in them.

Behold: an orc. 

Behold: a half-orc. Note shining armor and general comparative "bright"-ness.

Which brings me to the kicker: for the most part, in contrast, the remaining races have highly variable appearances and alignments--humans, in particular, are depicted as every alignment and have the range of skin colors typical to non-D&D humans. The monstrous races are primarily characterized as such due to the gods they worship. The Drow’s spider-goddess, for instance, is what drove them to evil; same with the Orcs’ god. But the fact that humans can also have evil gods and do evil shit, despite being any color of the human skintone rainbow, doesn’t really help the Always Chaotic Evil races’ characterization hold water.