Ok so, I'm coming into this having stopped playing 2 years ago, having played a vulp/human for the majority of that time. I make a point of this only to say that I have no idea about the current "vox clique" and the events Neca has described above.
I understand why things like spaceproof was removed, even if I only ever used it to put a nukie cardboard cut out outside the HoS office window, I know mechanically it was too easy for antags to abuse (also at the time we had fastmos).
While this is primarily a RP focused game, combat is a rather large proponent of it whether its Sec v Antag or Miner v Lavaland or Crew v TSpooder/Swarmer/Xeno/Nukie. With that in mind I think the simple brute/burn modifiers are not sufficient in conveying racial differences. Put simply they come across as nerfs for the sake of it, obviously wasn't the intention but I can see how players (IPC players especially) would see it as a "Fuck your favourite race" mentality.
The issue with these modifiers is that being, by and large, the most common damage types by a wide margin is that certain common gameplay elements and roles become unforgiving for certain races. Some relish the challenge, while others cry foul and the "why you hate [race], maintainers?" mentality arises. It's also something that the player themselves actually can't try to overcome, only complain in Deadchat about.
The solution I think is introducing more mechanical differences between the races; something entirely unique to them (Ex. the Unathi tail swipe, Grey telepathy) Things that players playing those races have to consider while playing them instead of complaining about them in deadchat because its an unavoidable "nerf". Unfortunately this is only possible with some serious coding and reworking and the maintainers have a lot on their plate as is what with the remaps, refactors and bugfixes and such.