Shibboleth Lover

If you don't already know it, I have a problem about the way fantasy tends to use 'race' when it talks about culture.   Primativism, tribalism etc are conflated into a set of stereotypes which would be clearly racist if applied to a real world group of people.

But are there limits to this?  Are all fantasy races just people in funny costumes?  Are there times where a truly alien part of your biology makes you act and think differently to human beings?

Enter the Shibboleth, my beast men whose biological drive to mate and produce progeny drives their culture and their actions.  While not truly evil, they are dangerous and humans have a good reason to be afraid of them.

Through the Shibboleth I'm trying to test the limits of race where you have something we don't have in our world - sentient beings that are biologically different from us.  They are the selfish gene gone wild, nature bloody in tooth and claw.  But, do they are have potential to overcome?  Can nurture win over nature?  These are, I think, really interesting questions.