Humanity is inherantly humanity. What is "good" and "evil" depends entirely upon your personal perspective and the situation at hand; these aren't absolute concepts, at least not in my opinion. You can predict to a certain extent what people will do in most situations, and I suppose you could give the collective race a classification such as "good" or "evil" depending on that, although that would still be a shaky definition at best, and wouldn't really account for personal differences within people or, if it did, I doubt it would account for them outside of one's own culture. With as many different perspectives as there are people, and no standard to say who is correct and who isn't, how could there be one universal standard by which to judge a race? You can say that humanity's actions are self-serving or serve the needs of the collective rather than the individual in most cases, but you can interpret a single action in hundreds of different ways; how you do so depends on what you think about it. Say, for example, one person comforts another. One might think that they're doing it for the sake of that person, yet they could also get a great deal of satisfaction out of doing it, or might just be uncomfortable with the situation. What's their motivation? In generic terms, the first would be classified as "good" and yet the other two would be classified as "selfish" ("evil" is a bit too strong a word) and this is just for one act. Everyone is motivated by different things and, when you have the wonderful concept of rationalisation, anything and everything can be made out to be "good", so how does one tell what is and what isn't? You could argue that if everything could be perceived as "good", then surely nothing is, because no distinction is made, but that brings up a host of other problems.
The very act of thinking about something defies altruism, because altruism doesn't require thought. If you have to think about doing it, you're engaging in rational choice, which defies the notion of doing good for good's sake; it might still be considered good, but it could also be considered self-serving, because it doesn't serve any detriment to you. You could argue that the fact we have to ask this question at all proves that humanity is inherentely selfish, because if we were good there would be a certainty in that, or at least not a need to speak it. But if we were certain of our own nature, that could be interpreted as arrogance, which is inherently self-serving. Round and round it goes. For every good perspective, there is an equal and opposite evil perspective, and validity is determined solely by individual observation, defying the idea of an absolute collective standard beyond that created by a single individual.
One may argue that the standard of society should be used, but if history - or rather, what has been written of our history, whether that is true or not - indicates anything, it is that those standards are as prone to change as standards between individuals for these things are. Standards change with cultures as well as time as well: whilst I hate to use the standard example, homosexuality is perfectly fine in some places, but could get you killed in others. Providing an overall definition is difficult for that single thing alone, let alone the nature of an entire race, which is compiled of who knows how many such issues that people are going to be divided over.
I don't think human nature can be generalised in such simple terms; perhaps in the sphere of a small community, but certainly not in a global context. Humans are incapable of being anything other than what they are, and what they are can only be quantified on an individual level, and not as a generalisation. Of course, generalisations are the only way that we can relate to one another and thereby communicate properly, but I think, ultimately, how you perceive humanity based on what you see is the only real determining factor in this.
That was all horribly convoluted, but that's how I see it. I'm a cynic, and I have a very negative view of humanity, but I like to try and keep an open mind towards things~
