Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Racist Tropes on Drow STOP IT

God WotC is doing everything wrong with it approach to race now.

I've not read the original books but it seems like the intellectual heft behind comes from Paul B. Sturtevant and Sturtevant is an idiot who paints with too wide a brush. Or maybe brush is too generous, he's using a roller to paint a portrait.

Yes, large parts of Tolkein are problematic and, yes, Tolkein was influenced by the scientific racism of his time. But to call Tolkein a scientific racist is a slight of hand on Sturevant's part. Instead, Tolkein was a devout (English) catholic who literally believed in souls Did Tolkein translate some scientific racist ideas into religious / magical ones? Yes. Was racism an influence? Yes. It the trilogy a work of scientific racism? No. The notion is risible. The assertion is so silly I can't believe someone actually wrote that and published it.

So as James Mendez Hodes says: "D&D, like Tolkien, makes race literally real in-game by applying immutable modifiers to character ability scores, skills, and other characteristics.”

But that's a good thing. Instead of saying "isn't it problem that people are pretending race is real" we should be reflecting on how different fantasy races are from socially constructed "races". So if a racist tell us that in "Asians" and "Caucasians" are different races we should say: Oh really, can one of these 'races' see in the dark? Can either one go without sleep? Live to be 900? Dwarves and elves cannot have children but all socially constructed 'races' can have children together.

Instead of clutching pearls and saying that its horrible that people are fantasizing that race is real we should instead use elves and dwarves as thought experiments that demonstrate the considerable distance between the peoples of the earth and real races (species).

Again with Sturevant
Let's talk about real world stereotypes and see how well it maps onto the drow. The scientific racists grabbed onto evolutionary theory to construct Africans as occupying a lower rung on the evolutionary ladder than Europeans. The racists constructed Africans as less intelligent, less sophisticated and more physically fit. Also there was stuff about head size, arm length, brow size, lips, body odor and hair texture thrown in. (tangent -- if Africans had invented racism they would have focused on the profusion of hair on Europeans. But I'm tangenting)

As compared other races drow are more intelligent (proclivity for magic), more sophisticated (treacherous, scheming) , and less physical (lower constitutions). Drow are short, thin and, well, pixie like. Exclude the charcoal colored skin, it's almost like the drow are mirror opposite of the African stereotype. Or fuck the "almost like" -- the drow are so far away from the racist stereotype of Africans that they can't be compared. If Sturevant can't see that, I can't help him.

(and I didn't even mention that Drow also see in the dark, levitate and make things glow. Which is like which human group again?)

Now the issue with orcs is more problematic. Because the orc stereotype does indeed fit onto the stereotypes for many of the peoples who were victims of colonization. But didn't World of Warcraft teach us that replacing "inherent evil" with "cultural evil" is actually worse? Instead of talking about an absurd, fantastical notion -- an evil god warped their souls -- we just say orcs are uncivilized, warlike and ruled by their passions because of their inferior culture. *Waves at colonialism* Congrats, you have jumped out of Tolkien's frying pan into the acid pit of colonial thinking. If only there was some strong person to bring culture to these primitives . . . Or perhaps the don't need to be civilized? How about a nice story about their virtues? Surely these savages have nobility?

Oh, like this from WotC:


Yeah, some jungle dwellers who are closer to the earth. Nope, no chance of a noble savage trope emerging from that template! Good save, WotC. Well done, you.

Again, quoting Sturevant: Two things: a) fuck you b) same sentiment but with let me expand a bit:

A much greater influence on Tolkein than scientific racism was theology -- old school Catholics believed (some still believe) that babies are born with original sin. Evil = corruption, Adam corrupted the souls of humanity. Babies literally have a stain on their soul that needs to be washed away in a baptismal ceremony. This idea isn't any less sophisticated than the protestant notions that challenged it and become dominant. But idiots like Sturevant don't realize that by declaring inherent evil as a less sophisticated notion than his preferred alternative he is simply secularizing a papist-protty disagreement. This is the very essence of Whiggish history, my good historian.

As an anti-fascist, as someone whose politics are more left than thou, I honestly believe that WotC is making things worse by switching from magical / spiritual evil to cultural evil. They are making the biggest mistake since the Matizca setting. Stop the move towards colonial thinking WotC!

Lolth corrupted the souls of the drow, Eilistraee offers them a spiritual baptism. If you lose that you are left with stories of noble savages, less advanced cultures and morally bankrupt societies. Or, to say the same thing, with the ideology of colonialism.

/rant

To answer the last part first, I don't know if any game has ever caused racism in reality. I don't really think it matters either. The issue is not that a clumsy handling of subrace levels of pigmentation is going to make Klan-cloubhouses pop out everywhere, but rather that there is a growing understanding that a particular way of describing something is actually hurtful. And why cause hurt when it is not necessary? It's the same thing with the f-term for the non-straight as a "casual insult". Same thing with the r-term for what are in general well-meaning people who just happen to be born with lower intelligence. Same thing with using male pronoun instead of neutral "they" when gender is unspecified.

It might feel a bit too "woke" for you, but humanity has a fairly long record of doing something for a while, then figuring out that it probably isn't "right" and "proper" to do that something, and then increasingly trying to not do that. Slavery, gender equality, human rights, and so on. That something used to be done is simply not a strong argument that it ought to be done some more in the future.

And if we break it down a bit, cut away the fluff, then the issue is not that hard to see. Having a fairly human-like race that is by and large divided by skin color, with all the white members being "good" and all the black members being "evil"? That's probably not a good idea, in retrospect. Not because it promotes racism, but because a whole lot of people have actually tried out that "fiction" in real life. Taking their misery and using it for what is ultimately fun and giggles hardly feels all that respectful.

That out of the way, there certainly are things that by any reasonable standard should be subject to censorship. How to build chemical weapons from kitchen supplies, for instance. Imagine the ramifications of that being common knowledge. Or how to build nuclear weapons in 25 easy steps. If such knowledge was common then humanity would surely destroy itself. It thus follows that there is knowledge that has to be subject to censorship if we hope to have some form of civilization. It thus follows that even anti-censorship sentiments can possibly be taken too far. This is a rather extreme argument, obviously, but it falls short of fallacy by absurdity because we don't know that such knowledge actually would absurd. At least I don't.

There will always be the few cases everyone is waiting for.
Just like in our real world, all white people were claimed to have been "the knee" on a certain black USAmericans neck.
Everyone can twist and suggercoat facts as they are but fact is people are
° stupid, and
° tribal
and secretely crave violence for entertainment and relief, just like in the times of the roman Empire with the colloseum.

Soccer & other sports try to guide this primal urges in a non-harmful and productive way.
But the success is debatable.
You have hooligans & all kinds of people craving to inflict harm on others above all else.
And they will use any chance in order to do so.
Maybe some of them even look for pathetic excuses because they are dissatisfied with their own situation in life.


But ultimately they will go out and "demand a suitable target" for their violent urges.

Either alone but preferably in a mentality of " Us against them. " since this is how cowards behave.
They do not seek a fair fight, they seek superiority in numbers and others who are legimitated by society to attack.
Who the true ehtnicitys in our real world are who are most okay to hate, lets say I very much feel it with my "sinfully bright skin".

People are full of contempt, envy and spite for others.
Sooner or later. Because they are weaklings.
Because ultimately they hate themself.


~ Back to Faerun ~

The Drow are very much in the clutches of a being that truly stands above others. A god.
Fun fact Mr.Rhexx has just released a new video regarding that. =)


But regardless of something not less than a deity messing with one's head - ultimately people want to feel superior to others or else the ugly envy comes out.

And if all else fails they will gladly embrace even race to justify their primitive behaviour.
This is realistic, this is authentic - as annoying as it is.
But the racism in Faerun is ultimately just that of a story and a game. It is there to... °cough° to enjoy.

It is what makes the world of Baldurs Gate feel true and genuine.
There might be famous ( or not so famous ) exceptions like Drizzt Do'urden, a good Drow who has flipped the whole of Drow culture off and Lolth herself, but news would not spread fast in a world practically living in the medieval times.
Without internet, social media and other devices enabling a quick and wide spread of information.

BREAKING NEWS Good natured Drow safes little child from burning house!! ( LoL )

But the paranoya and distrust won't be washed away just because of one good Drow.
Drizzt and the few others who are good Drow, are just not enough to outweigh the many bastards of their race & culture.
And a more trustful and less vigilant stance towards Drow in general, will one way or the other hurt the other races inevitably.
Cause most of them, won't be good.
They won't.
And so the justified distrust will be empowered again and individuals will once more reject & distrust Drows for a lifetime by personal bad experience with them.

It is very selfevident what is going on with a certain race in Faerun if their reputation is bad on a global scale even in times of slow & medieval communication networks.

To quote my former chemistry teacher replying to a student complaining about a bad grade due to difficult questions: "There are stars exploding out there as we speak. Don't you feel pathetic for complaining about such a minor thing?"
Whether or not someones words can or cannot hurt me is entirely my choice. Anyone is invited to insult me, I just don't care. Creating a society of emotionaly fragile people who are easily hurt or offended seems to set them up for pain and frustration.


We were not talking about deliberate action. The drow were not written the way they are in order to insult someone.


Humanity also has a long record of changing back to finding something ok. Slavery was considered a big no-no in most of medieval europe but then had a big comeback in the colonies. Serfdom in eastern prussia slowly came into being by free farmers surrendering more and more autonomy to their lords in exchange for protection. Later it was abolished. Morals are fluid and what was considered wrong and then considered right can be considered wrong again at some point in time.

True. I can't remember claiming that it was.



What you are suggesting is security by obscurity. Let's see whether or not that applies.

How to create chemical warfare agents is common knowledge. Take the Handbook of Toxicology of Chemical Warfare Agents for example. There are publicly available patents describing the production of VX. Talking of kitchen supplies... Anyone with at least a medium IQ can easily figure out how to seperate and capture chlorine gas from table salt and water using electriciy. So why are we still alive and not all dead due to chemical terrorism? Because the number of casualities of C-Weapon Terrorism is primarily a function of the determination of the potential terrorists. When the Aum sect attacked a subway in Tokio in 1995 using sarin gas they had to put in quite some effort. They initially wanted to use VX. What made them use sarin instead was not the censorship of the knowledge of how to make an even more toxic substance (they knew how to make it) but the logistics and capital expenditure needed to actually do it (They later managed to produce small quantities of VX).

Turning to nuclear weapons:
Every actor with the will and finance necessary to build nuclear weapons has managed to get hold of the technology. Making Plutonium requires a nuclear reactor, very expensive. Natural Uranium is legally obtainable here in Germany. Only 0.7% of it is fissible U235. The flourine chemistry and centrifuges necessary to separate it to high purity are what prevents nuclear weapon proliferation. There are a few banned components like Krytrons, but they are not very difficult to make.


Closed source software often uses security by obscurity. That is considered bad practice for a reason, just look at the IT-Security news. The assumption that any technology in active use could be kept secret for long has a giant list of counterexamples going against it.


An ever higher level of scientific understanding and derived technology always yields more potential for destruction. As proliferation of such technology cannot be effectively censored or prevented it naturally follows that it will be used to cause destruction at some point in time. Look at the field of DIY Biology. All the destructive potential of nuclear weapons but capital expenditure orders of magnitude below it. Things will go horribly wrong, censorship or not. Every day there is a small chance of someone creating havoc in some lab by chance or by intention. As time goes by that chance will eventually materialize. One of the more popular "solutions" to the fermi parodox is the self destruction of every species by its own misused or misunderstood high technology.
What makes me pay attention to all the hatespeech drama is the close connection of many of the loudest voices involved to critical race theory. CRTs standpoint epistemology is one of the biggest threats to the existence of an informed and rational society. The correct handling of a nuclear reactor does not depend upon someones lived experience and Newtons second law applies to africans even though it was discovered by and named after a white european man. Yet some of these people take their 'critical theory' (It's neiter critical nor a theory) to the extreme and deny the applicability of "western colonial science" to "minorities". In a society that depends on its technology for its survival such an attitude is threatening the survival of the species. Even when talking about the removal of potential accidental racist tropes in a fantasy world I have a hard time ignoring the ideology of those demanding such changes the loudest.

I think that your arguments fell short of proving that. Nonetheless I am thankful that you attempted to disprove my thesis that all censorship is bad. I always welcome counterarguments.

Maybe it is not necessary to expand the view of the issue at hand this far but I guess that most people won't get derailed from discussing race and the drow by some posts concerning the foundations of morality and censorship.

So I wanted to jump back to a question I proposed initially. The Article discusses how - after a backlash - Salvatore decided to do the right thing and add in additional material showing that the Drow were not inherently evil.

So if the Drow deserve this sort of re-write, why not Orcs, or Goblins? Is there an underlying factor that would favor one of these groups over the other two?

Is it just because the Drow are so popular?

First: Thanks to most of you for keeping a discussion about such a controversial topic so calm. There are many places on the internet where such things quickly turn into a CAPSLOCK yelling drama of insults.


I guess that some people got offended by the books and started it. Once the drow lore is changed they will likely look for more (perceived or real) issues.

Yet the Tolkien society feels the need to preemtively construct it into a piece of woke literature. Its summer semiar series had gems like:
Gondor in Transition: A Brief Introduction to Transgender Realities in The Lord of the Rings
The Lossoth: Indigeneity, Identity, and Antiracism
“Something Mighty Queer”: Destabilizing Cishetero Amatonormativity in the Works of Tolkien

So one side sees Tolkiens work as racist and the Tolkien Society responds by trying to portray it as some 'woke' things it isn't. Both try to see what they want to be there. I see it as a failure to distance oneself from the current cultural trends. Not everything must always be analyzed only under the distorted view of a given cultural environment.
Because they are not races but seperate species. This whole discussion is somewhat based on confusing racism and speciesism.

I find the whole idea of "inferior cultures" strange. Are the amazonian natives inferior cultures because they form hunting parties and have less convoluted administration than some other cultures? Again, universalist morality fails.
It is said that we live in a post metaphysical society and that does lead to problems with non strictly materialistic works.

Sports teams are tribal surrogates for many fans. Your hooligan example is very fitting.

It is how humans needed to behave in order to survive. This whole "Us versus them" attitude has strong foundations in evolutionary psychology. Defining and defending the perimeter between "Us" and "Them" in a dangerous environment of scarce resources (mostly food) was necessary for survial. Without agriculture providing stable food conditions the causes for conflict are abundant. Should an economic crisis or world war ever lead to scaricity of resources again the "Us against them" structures would quickly and violently return. Faerun is such a place. Supernatural desasters are frequent and dangerous creatures are a bigger problem than a few wolves. Groups not sticking firmly together in such situations quickly fall into disarray.
It's just natural for some negative narratives about the drow being common in such an environment. Things usually didn't go well for those trusting them and there is no powerful state to save anyone. In absence of a state monopoly on violence "Us vs. them" often yields better results than "Lets all be friends". If that were not the case such tendencies would not have been selected by evolution and would not exist today.

jesus what happened to the mods, like they took a vacation or something.

I mean, there's not really any need for mods here, is there? The topic a) is relevant to BG3, and b) has not devolved into mostly personal insults. If anything, the discussion has evolved from being pretty hostile on the first couple pages to the relatively good discussion it is now. The most insulting thing on this page is calling humans as a whole stupid, which is perfectly fair. And hostility against corporations, but that's equally if not more fair.

B is questionable, mods usually chime in & pretty much was expecting it on this thread. Just been a while since I've seen a post.

Again, I think it's a mistake. If we trade "inherently evil" for "culturally evil" we get something closer to real world attitudes. This is the WoW mistake -- which eliminated "inherent" evil from orc but put in colonial narrative in its place. There is one leader who wants to civilize his people. When you trade evil souls for the ideology of colonialism you take a giant step backward. (and as much I like Solasta I think they fell into the trap set for them by WotC)

It's just the power of the visual. "The black skinned race is inherently evil" fits the twitter length attention span. The fact that nothing else about their construction supports contemporary stereotypes gets considered.


Racism has layers of meaning. I'm using racism in the original, scientific racist sense as a belief that humans are divided into different species or sub species. Look up the etymology of 'race', you will find it was once synonymous with terms species and breed. What you call specieism is what I am calling racism.

There was a lot about your brief overlook on Tolkien's work that I found puzzling if not openly debatable, but in the end what's relevant to this thread here is this passage.
This is a good summary of why it's always extremely confusing when people tries to draw a direct comparison and imply the "Drows are painted as bad because they are mean to represent African people, so their existence should be offensive for people of African lineage".
No, they are not, so no it shouldn't be, rationally speaking.


P.S. On the topic of "binary division between good and evil" and how "it all began with Tolkien" according to some people, it's somewhat important to stress for context that Tolkien's narrative didn't lack "nuance" out of naivety, but out of a deliberate stylistic choice.
The man was perfectly aware of writing stories where "good and bad were two very distinct sides" (more or less, given that the good side always started divide and had an uphill battle to come together as one, while the evil was almost always a corruption of what began as good) and he openly commented about it in a lot of letters he wrote.
He even went far enough to stress that he wanted to avoid moral ambiguity because it wasn't a good fit for the type of epic he aimed for. Some of his most recent writings even commented on the attempts to write a sequel for Lord of the Rings, but he decided soon enough that "it was a very depressing and dark tale about some of the most unflattering sides of humanity and not something worth telling" (not an exact quote; I'm fishing from years-old memories).

As far as I am aware race meant to be people of a common ancestry. Depending upon with whom you start such a lineage it will include more or less people with more or less similar attributes.

What makes it confusing is that it has both biological and cultural meanings. If you can form clusters of individuals showing certain attributes within one species that could be called a race. If the members of the races can produce fertile offspring with each other they belong to a species. There can be more or less meaningful differences between various races. The social problem arises when these differences are 1) Overstated or 2)Connected to a moral value. The combination of 1 and 2 tends to lead to acts of severe violence. Ascribing moral value to some attribute or concept often leads to "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" scenarios, as my countries history (germany) vividly shows. Taking biological concepts and ascribing moral ideals to them is dangerous.

Indeed. Colonized peoples had resources that the colonial powers wanted and so they made reasons why it was okay to extract these resources. The inferiority of 'primitive' cultures was the ideology that legitimized the land grabs.

But, again, the noble savage is the other side of this same coin -- see the romantic photos of indian "braves" and "squaws" being used to sell products -- and it sure looks like the Lorendrow are getting set up to make that same, great mistake. We're finally getting these offensive images off of products and WotC comes late to the party with new sub species that *does* resemble real human groups.

It's a like they are seeking to fail.

Right. Some people make the mistake to assume that colonization happened because of negative sterotypes. They were colonized because the other guys had better weapons and they had fertile land, gold and other nice things. There is an interesting book about the connection between non-inheriting sons in europe and colonization by Wolfssohn IIRC. The romans already had their concept of just war which in practice meant coming up with reasons why to conquer some area after the conquest had already been decided to be done.

The fall of Gondor. Afer the reign of Aragorn things would start to fall apart due to political strife and cultural decline.

Thanks! Agreed.


I think Tolkein, despite his denials, did have a moral message to deliver. I think his denials were product of trying to distinguish himself from C.S. Lewis and to get from the whole Tom Bombadil controversy.

For Tolkein, evil is the corruption of the good. And he locates the origins of this corruption in two human failings: fear of death and fear of change. Saruman is corrupted because he fears his own death. If the new age, the age of men, comes to pass Saruman's immortality will fade. So he holds on to life even as his efforts destroy all that makes life worth living.

I think he, as a small c conservative, was speaking to his fellow conservatives urging them to caution. The rise and rule of the hobbits is not something to resist . . . I think he, as a patriot, was trying to find a new story to shore up the value of kings and queens . . .

There are layers to Tolkein that are lost if we lose the "inherent"

TL;DR Tolkein was sophisticated think. A belief in essence doesn't mean your thought less sophisticated.

Take a look at the word history. I don't have access to the Oxford English Dictionary right now or I'd cut and paste. If you read 18th and 19th century biology you will see people taking about races of birds, races of reptiles ect.


Yes. And I'm saying that fantasy races can help us disentangle those meanings. We should say "this is fantasty, this is reality" Orcs are evil because an evil god enslaved their soul. Their culture is a reflection of Gruumsh' evil. We should leave it that way.

Why doesn't this template apply to real world humans? Humans don't have souls, they just have culture.

That was a fair few quotes. The obvious problem if I respond to each is that in about two or three comments, based on my personal experience, I would guesstimate a 1% chance that maybe one of us half-way has an idea what we're actually talking about. And it would be a horrendous eye-sore on top of that. So I will try to essay my way through it. I will probably leave out a few things, but I don't think it can be helped.

Firstly, no, I do not feel bad or pathetic complaining about "small things" just because a star is exploding somewhere way out beyond my ability to affect it, far even beyond my ability to even know about it. Obviously you can make the choice to not care what people tell you, but consider the consequences if we build a society on the foundation that nobody cares about anyone other than themselves, nobody has the time of day for any opinion other than their own, and nobody has an emotional investment in anyone other than themselves. That hardly sounds like a great path forward.

And it has nothing to do with catering to fragile people. That would imply that it is okay to run around and punch people who could totally take that punch. If you make it okay to misbehave some of the time because the targets can probably take it then you're getting used to swing a hammer and suddenly everything looks like a nail. You've normalized a behavior that probably should not be a norm. Being hurt by words sounds a bit pathetic, I agree, but words convey emotions, thoughts, beliefs. And being hurt by the emotions, thoughts, and beliefs of others is perfectly reasonable. Humans are a social species and feeling is a big part of what we are. We are not particularly logical or rational beings.

You are right, the initial harm done was not intentional, but does that really influence what should be done now? Assume that you intended to do not harm but you've found out that a thing you do actually does cause some harm anyway. What do you do? Do you keep doing it or do you change it to hopefully cause less harm?

And then the censorship thing. You are getting a bit stuck in the specifics of my example, but that is not really where the argument lies. I picked chemical weapons and easy nuclear weapons because I find the thought scary that private groups (or even individuals like a certain Breivik) would have uncomplicated access to such. By your own admission, the access to actually fielding such weapons is not exactly trivial. But if you're not scared of any numbskull with a trivial ability to deploy chemical weapons or private actors with nuclear weapons, fine, we can still dial it up a bit to whatever you actually are scared of. The basic premise is, would you let babies play with live hand grenades? Or would you try and not let them have live hand grenades?

Not caring about insults does not necessarily mean not caring about anything. Why choose to give others the power to hurt with mere words?
I did not suggest any change of behaviour for the perpetrators of insults or negative tropes because my suggestion was aimed at those recieving such verbal negativity.

If the harm is purely psychological and subject to the cooperation of the harmed person to be harmed... I probably wouldn't bother. We need to get offended from time to time in order to learn how to handle it. Just like children need a bit of rough playing to figure out the limits of their physical capabilites.

We were talking about censorship. How would censorship of information prevent babies from aquiring hand grenades?
Let's make it a bit more realistic. If you want to stretch the idea of censorship really far you could argue that it would be censorship not to tell your 3 year old son the code to the weapons safe.
Is that really censorship or is it taking the concept too far?

Drizzt is his breakthrough Character, which might explain why hes talking bout new books with those other Drow Races to show what actual studies in real world came up with.
People who read books identify themselves in the reading process with characters. And as Drizzt is the most important one and is black, you can guess why its about Drow.
Thats why other Races are not in the Talk, but we can assume its the same for other races and Drow is our example Race

To start with:
Theres allready several Studies about Human babies behavior.
The general consensus learned by those experiments in the studie is that Human babies are born altruistic no matter what skin color and everything later in behavior is learned or copied.

With that in mind its totally possible to imply that Mr. Salvatore learned about those studies and wants to reflect this in his new books.
Kickstarted maybe by his Fanletters from people who are not so happy that even Drizzt has changed to be a good person all other Drows are seen inherently evil.
And him (Fan) beeing a human, with how do i say this "colored, black skin tone" (like Drows are described), his experience in life is that f.e. black colored humans have suffered a lot
and prejudices against black people arent gone from this world yet, makes him sad.

When you have all this in mind, then its natural to change your wordin to prevent an easy excuse.
That just because of color you can use racist tropes on all people of that color.

Mr. Salvatore "grew" and as he had influenced/inspired a lot of us Fantasy/Scifi fans its good to take responsibility as an author.
Future books from Mr. Salvatore will still inspire, but they will surely less inspire you to learn how to make racist tropes just by having read his books.
Which never where books to be misused for learning racism. They where books with good characters and story and all what happened to write about for a story.
But in that time when those books where written, our Society and language / wording was not ready yet to be an important part of leaving behind prejudices, racism, etc you name it.

Language changes and with that how we perceive it and our world around us.
It changes howe we bring up our children and how they will learn to be more conscious about what they say.
Every generation can be a little better.
Everything starts with our words and how we use them.

Are you referring to "Altruistic food sharing behavior by human infants after a hunger manipulation" by Barragan et alii? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-58645-9

Before jumping to conclusions I suggest a bit of caution:

Regarding the supposedly hungry babies willing to share food:
"We acknowledge that infants’ hunger at the individual level was not measured through blood glucose level or other assessments, which would be useful in drawing more precise inferences about “hunger” at an individual level."
Were they hungry or were they expecting the delayed feeding to occur soon?

"By giving away food to strangers, individuals may promote dyadic affiliation and group cohesion and thereby species success within the dynamic environment of evolutionary adaptation. Some other mammals, including Callitrichidae, Canidae, Delphinidae, as well as birds, have evolved food sharing behavior with kin, notably parental feeding of the young, but they do not readily or spontaneously engage in this activity with non-kin or strangers."

I would like to point out that small groups of hunter-gatherers were the natural social environment for humans during most of the existence of the species.
In such an environment opportunites for babies to share with people who were not members of the group must have been very scarce.

Like the behavioral changes during puberty?
Of course the social environment does have a huge effect on behavior. Pretty much no one is denying that. That does not mean that there are no genetic/hormonal influences on behavior afer infancy. Please take a look at the age/hormonal level curves and consider the enormous impact of these hormones on brain development.

Taking an interesting study and extending its result far beyond its claims is prone to produce overly bold conclusions not supported by the evidence. In this academic war between the "Blank Slate" social constructivists and the "it's all in your genes" factions such boldness is unfortunately common and exaggerated by the media looking for attention grabbing headlines. Don't let others draw conclusions for you. Take the time and read the studies completely and think about their limits. Trusting the opinion or summaries of others is very time-saving but sometimes also misleading.

Another study that could be interesting for you: "Three-month-olds, but not newborns prefer own-race faces" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2566511/
I think that a better title would have been "prefer own-group faces". I am highly sceptical that language is the determining factor here. Who is part of the group that the infant is surrounded by? In-group preferences tend to form much earlier than even basic language comprehension.