Orc

From what I've seen on YouTube, D&D has made Orcs people.

I did that 30 years ago.

Yawn.

Once I'd made them people, I kept them the bad guys.

The nations of my little fantasy world were each dominated by a given race and there were two nations which were run by Orcs.

Those nations were aggressive and expansionist.  One was also a theocracy, although it never came up in play.

The campaign did not last long, but I got FuzzyGeff's Elf who identified as an Orc from it.

This is also the world where the languages were national.  The two orc nations spoke different languages that were related to each other like Portuguese and Spanish.

Languages being national and there being TWO "Orcish" languages really upset a portion of the players.

But, I managed to keep the bad guys the bad guys and to let them be people.

I, unlike WOTC, remembered that even Nazis were people.  The Khmer Rouge were people.  The West Taiwanese Communist Party are people.  Antifa are people.  KKK are people.

Making the Orc religion specify that an Orc is the race made in the image of God also made the Orc nations somewhat racist too.  The non-theocracy even made the racism policy in a bizarre way that led to FuzzyGeff's Elf/Orc.

Only Orcs can be full citizens.  Because Orc is the pinnacle of perfection, God says so, only an Orc can defeat an Orc.  FuzzyGeff's character passed the rites of combat to be recognized as a citizen, despite his hideous and misshapen appearance.

It led to some fun role playing at least.