First off, some background to give you an idea of what my perspective on this is: my ancestry is, on both sides of my family, what would today be considered "white," (a racial designation that has shifted over time, though usually defined through exclusion of those who aren't rather than any shared experience - that's a whole other can of worms) but on my father's side, we're Ashkenazi (which is basically Central/Eastern European) Jewish, more ethnically than religiously, whereas my mother's side is a mix of northwestern European ancestry.
Race in the real world is a construct. Humans are, on a genetic level, extremely similar, regardless of what color their skin is, the shape of their eyes, or any other superficial signifiers. And there's no category within human races that cannot reproduce with another - which would be the definition of a different species. Certainly, different cultures exist, and the experience of people who are identified as members of different races can be very different depending on their perceived race and the society's racial biases, but it's all ultimately a construct that is not empirical fact.
In the fantasy genre, borrowing from figures of mythology, race is the word used to refer to what are essentially similar but separate species. But they have also, in a way, come to represent, writ large, the idea of separate ethnic groups in a world.
Much as a diverse country like America can have people with different traditions living together, the mixing traditions of, say, Dwarves and Halflings, could be represented in a bustling fantasy metropolis like Waterdeep.
And with a diverse setting like that, it's inevitable that members of different races would wind up pairing up and having kids.
But here's where it gets complicated from a gameplay design side of things:
First off, "race" in D&D can refer to a profound range of distinctions. If you compare a Dwarf and an Elf, these are both basically humans with a few tweaks. Dwarves are short and stocky, with a historical (and magical) connection to the earth, while Elves are tall (actually in D&D they're also a bit shorter than humans) and lithe, with pointed ears and with a connection to other environments, like forests. But they're basically both humans with some of the proportions stretched or squashed in various ways.
On the other hand, races can be quite different from humans. Spelljammer: Adventures in Space gave us Plasmoids, Autognomes, and Thri-kreen, which are, respectively, a sentient goo, a robot, and a sapient, human-sized insect.
The problem is that race as a character-building category in a game, with mechanical implications, forces a certain clear delineation. Races in D&D are built with a set of mechanical features that are meant to come as a package, and are indeed balanced in an effort to make sure that no one is at a disadvantage for picking any given race. For example, in the new Character Creation UA, Dragonborn are given Darkvision, likely stemming from the fact that their existing racial features aren't quite powerful enough in comparison to races that already had Darkvision.
In the 2014 PHB, two mixed-race options are presented: the Half Elf and the Half Orc, the latter of which is the only option presented to have any orc ancestry (Orcs would show up as playable in later books). Both of these imply that the other half is human. However, there is no corresponding option for Half Dwarves, Half Gnomes, Half Halflings, etc.
And I can understand why, from a design perspective, one would want to limit how many of these half-options one introduces. This would create an exponential growth of how many options one would have to produce with each new introduction, and new questions of how to represent, for example, the child of a half orc and a half elf, could produce an infinite number of potential race options.
WotC's proposed solution in the 2024 version of D&D (not one set in stone, as this is only in playtest material) is to eliminate these Half- race options and instead embrace the idea that there's tons of mixed heritage characters, but that they'll still be represented by one of the base races. So, for instance, your character with Human and Orc parents could be represented with the Human or Orc traits. In a story and, if you have character art, visual way, you can indicate the mixed ancestry by blending the physical features of your ancestries, but from the perspective of the rules, you just pick one or the other.
This has pros and cons. The biggest pro is that it's simple to implement. However, it does seem to double down on the idea that race has these clear-cut distinctions - and again, the problem of using race to refer both to "humans that look a little different" as well as "peoples made by different gods" is really at the heart of the issue here. Likewise, I think the wording in the UA could have been more carefully written. It's unclear if the implication that having children between races is only possible through magic or miracles, or if it's natural and just uncommon for some reason.
The most radical solution to this issue would be to get rid of races entirely, and have biological features and traits exist in a more customizable manner. As I see it, though, the problem with this solution is when we get to the more outlandish race options. I can 100% imagine a world where elves, gnomes, dwarves, orcs, and halflings are basically all just humans with shapes and sizes we don't see in the real world. But it seems to me that part of the D&D fantasy is to be able to play as characters who are pretty far beyond mundane reality - playing as a Warforged, or a Centaur, or a Plasmoid, or a Tabaxi. Here, we want to see those radically non-human elements represented mechanically. If I'm a sentient blob of goo, I should be able to squeeze and stretch in ways that would crush the bones of any elf, human, or orc.
In other words, I don't think that getting rid of race as a mechanical choice at character creation is necessarily the best option (though I'd happily see us retire the term "race" to describe it).
All in all, I think that there's no solution here that is going to please everyone. However, as with a lot of these issues, one of the best ways to arrive at the most acceptable outcome is to get diverse voices to design or at least consult on these designs. Getting it perfect on the first pass isn't necessary, and again, perfect might not exist for this.
Honestly, I think the mechanical choice they've made is probably the most elegant. And as I said in my initial impressions of the UA, I like that this opens up the door to more diverse characters. In a lot of ways, it follows the way I've already been approaching this issue, and by removing Half Elves and Half Orcs, it could actually wind up making more mixed-heritage characters show up now that the rules don't imply that these two examples are the only ones.
I'm hoping we'll see lots of examples of mixed-race NPCs in published adventures moving forward, to make it clear to players and DMs that this is something you can do, and that D&D worlds can reflect the diversity of our own world.
But this is just my take. Thankfully, they have about two years to work on this.
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