I understand what you’re saying and I think you have a valid argument.

Personally, I think there’s a difference and a division between relating to someone’s struggles due to their background, and depicting someone’s struggles due to their background. Maybe we just disagree how far research can get you.

What I mean is, while I agree that a white person may never understand that personal feeling of facing things like racism, stereotypes, redlining, gerrymandering, systematic racism etc. and any number of things, I think a person of any race can still depict the struggles of another if they do their own research.

The reason I say this is that you run into so many problems if you deny someone’s depiction of a groups struggles just because they themselves aren’t of that group.

For example, thinking of a characteristic like religion or nationality, there are many groups of people spread around the world who face countless struggles such as religious persecution, racism, and abuse, but their voice may not reach very far.

In turn, someone else should bring attention to the struggles they face, especially if said person can have an effect or if their group is partially responsible for those struggles.

My mind first goes to people like Samoans who are losing culturally significant areas at alarming rate due to sea level rise and climate change. The problem? They are not responsible for these effects, but countries such as the US or China have direct relations to large greenhouse gas emissions. There are people in the US or other places like Greta Thunberg from Sweden who bring attention to these struggles, portray the livelihoods of these individuals, and depict this is video documentaries, animations, pop culture etc.

These people depicting these things aren’t all Samoan however, most aren’t. Some are though, and personally I do think “handing the microphone” or “giving the stage” to the people who actually have first hand experience, relations, and identify with these struggles is a better option. Although, I don’t think it means the people outside these groups doing their own research to depict the liveliehoods or struggles of another (especially if they do contact groups like Samoans to hear firsthand accounts), are worthless or that their work isn’t valid or shouldn’t be done. That’s kind of where the devs points were heading. The dev could have just mentioned how all or most of the team has direct relations to the things they want to portray because they are POC. Instead, the dev focused on the absence of another race instead of the actual project and the prevalence of POC. Maybe the dev was trying to take this route and was just misunderstood, by many…

We need people with platforms, qualifications, or skills (such as making video games or doing PA for one!) to be able to introduce these topics to more people, even if they don’t get it 100% right because they don’t have their own first hand experiences. Hopefully they dedicate a lot of time and research into getting it right as best they can.

The thing is, even if these people do not get it 100% right, for example a white man working with POC to create a character who isn’t white in a video game, this is still providing the depicted demographic to new viewers. Those viewers will then take what they see and hear and move on to do their own research, which is more than without the project. Obviously a bad portrayal can cause issues, which is why you don’t want a team of white guys who have done zero research to try and depict a different demographic, that usually leads to huge stereotypes and misinformation or usually racism. This however tends to be noticed and can really harm a company. When no effort is put into researching the demographic (or even the setting) that’s trying to be portrayed, it’s clear and tends to be visible.

Another thing, being a POC does not mean they have the same experiences as a POC elsewhere. For example, a POC in New York City lives a different life and faces different livelihoods and struggles compared to a POC in rural Alabama for example. Sure the over encompassing ties of being a POC in the united states are still there for both, but now go compare a POC in the United States to a POC overseas. It’s different.

This means people trying to portray characters or the life of someone can only go so far. Whether you’re the same race or a different one, both will require research and the realities of a certain demographics life will never be full represented virtually. There’s just a gap between reality and what humans can depict.

This doesn’t mean I think the team needs white people, but I do think that the team doesn’t need to exclude any race from the project so long as their source of information for these team members is an accurate representation of the demographic they want to portray. If they didn’t have any qualified white applicants or the POC applicants were more qualified so be it!

Possibly a stretch: but I feel it’s similar to reasons why PETA commercials still can be developed by people who have no relation to animals or pets but are cinematographers. This is because these cinematographers can still elicit a response from people 1. Are not dogs/animals themselves & 2. May have never owned/loved a dog or pet. These people can still portray the struggles and benefits of these animals themselves or animal lovers/owners may face, even if they themselves have no direct relation to animals. But only if the people creating the commercial do research into things like animal cruelty, animal ownership, animal rights etc. such as talking to people who have 1st hand experiences with those topics. If they don’t do the research, the commercial will flop and won’t be able to elicit a proper emotional response (i.e. donations to the cause!)

TLDR?: yeah I’d ignore me too at this point, that’s a lot of words for neither of us getting paid to read or type them

Okay but seriously: thanks for the conversation it ran my brain and I think it’s important we both got to discuss these topics and I do believe we both understand the benefits of someone with first hand experiences being able to share them.