To be frank, I haven't been following to greatly into one DND, as I known thousands of folks are. For There's going to be a plethora of things of conflict among the community, and I myself am interested in just seeing the end results, and not all the hairy middle. But this recent article of race, caught my eye. At first the idea of changing race really stuck out at, I Frankly don't see a reason to change it. I have never noticed prejudice going along with the term within the confines of DND, and wishing to carry over political opinions into a rpg game just doesn't sit right with me. But none the less, moving to the term species, whilst at first the term may sound out of place. One is able to get use to it quickly, for after all starwars uses species instead of race when talking of different alien...species... . But as well race is more so for the variations within a species, as stated within this definition "competition between runners, horses, vehicles, boats, etc., to see which is the fastest in covering a set course." Jk, "each of the major groupings into which humankind is considered to be divided on the basis of physical characteristics or shared ancestry." So race would be better describe as the difference between a Hill Dwarf and a Mountain Dwarf, whilst Species is more so of a difference between a Goliath and an Elf.

There is already a thread discussing this topic on which you can find plenty of discussion regarding most of your points, including plenty of thoughts on etymology and linguistics.

As for the politics issue, that tends to get threads locked and posts deleted as politics does not really belong on this forum.  I will briefly respond on that point though, noting that, just because you did not see an issue does not mean one did not exist. There are plenty of folks out there who found the use of the term “race” in D&D problematic, not just because of external political factors, but factors within the game itself from its inception.  Anyone other than the most culturally insensitive can look at early depictions of Race in D&D and find countless examples where Gary Gygax - a self proclaimed biological determinist - inserted his own stereotypes and bigotry into the races of D&D.  

Contrary to what folks are complaining about, this is not about “bringing politics into D&D”, this change is actually doing the opposite - it is about removing politics, specifically  the racist-even-by-70s-standards politics of Gary Gygax. 

I'm curious, at the beginning of your post you claim to not understand why it should be changed...then at the end of the post you point out how inaccurate it's use is in D&D, which is one of the main (but perhaps not THE main) criticisms of the word. It should be noted that even the early designers realised that it was wrong - they even made a point of saying that they don't mean what we would normally think it would mean.

It's also worth mentioning that no one (or, at least, negligible numbers of people) is saying that it's racist. It's more that it carries a lot of baggage that makes playing or discussing the game uncomfortable for some. There are only three reasons for opposing a more inclusive terminology that I've seen while this has been discussed:

1. Species doesn't match the tone of the game.
2. Species is inaccurate.
3. Don't alter my game in any way, even in superficial ways, for any reason.

The first is valid, but is actually a criticism of the chosen replacement than the concept itself or the need for it. I'm more than happy for a more tone-appropriate suggestion. However, short of that, species is significantly better than race.

The second makes sense, except it's still an improvement on race, as you pointed out. I doubt we'll get much more accurate than species, due to limitations in language.

The latter is perplexing for me, and comes down to "I don't care about people with different experiences to me". I can understand resisting changes in mechanics, but this is such a superficial change that it's petty.