User blog comment:Longdead97/Ulfric's war effort & gaining support. Smart move or no?/@comment-5558140-20130324032553/@comment-1600847-20130326200418

I have to agree with Equillibrium on this, the only reason you can join the Stormcloaks as an elf is to allow any race to join. The casual gamers would have whined had they not been able to join based on their race, and Bethesda needs to pander to them to make enough profit from Skyrim.

As to the "only Nords as Stormcloaks NPCs", I think that's more because Bethesda didn't want to do the work required to make multi-racial NPCs. Likely also why the Imperial Legion has only Imperials, save for Rikke.

And I'm sorry, anyone who thinks the Storkcloaks aren't racist need to open their eyes. Both the Stormcloak and Imperial Legion were made to be morally grey, with both good and bad aspects. A lot of Stormcloaks go around spouting racist comments, don't tell me they're not racist.