The ethnocentric view of diversity

Ethnocentrism: A tendency to view alien groups or cultures from the perspective of one's own.

There's a fatal flaw to the way people refer to diversity, and I'll be referencing Magic: the Gathering once again.

Wizards of the Coast, creators of Magic: the Gathering, have always been of that far left coast bent, very focused on diversity and representation.  To give you an example of how that attitude has existed since the beginning, check out David Drake's All the Way to the Gallows, a collection of his more humorous works, and see how he describes writing a short story for a Magic anthology back in the mid-90s.

They've been very focused on representation in their art, and I don't mean including fantasy races.  It can be observed in multiracial portraits in cards like Village Outcasts (from the Innistrad world, roughly based on northern Europe) and Kytheon's Irregulars (from the Theros world, roughly based on Greece).  And the article linked here shows the royal family in the new expansion, Thrones of Eldraine, whose inspiration draws from Arthurian legends and Grimm's Fairy Tales.

Sure, there wasn't a lot of international trade in King Arthur's days, but if Wizards of the Coast wants to say their world is different, that's fine.

There's only one problem: They only do this some of the time.

In the worlds of Kamigawa (based on Japan), Tarkir (based on east and southeast Asia), and Kaladesh (based on India), there was none of this diversity.  (The Kaladesh example was the most egregious, because of the world building and the story.  It was a prosperous steampunk world, with travel by trains and cars.  And the story had a grand inventor's fair, surely something that would attract travelers from all over.  But no, everyone looked like a local, save for the deceased father of the planeswalker retconned into being from the world.)  It was important to have people of African heritage seen in Innistrad, but not important in these other worlds.  Why is that?

I'm going to coin the term ethnocentric diversity for what was seen here.  The people at Wizards of the Coast have shown themselves to be very ethnocentric.  When they think about diversity, they can only think about what diversity looks like in their own culture, from the people they see around themselves every day in the Seattle area.  They never asked themselves, "What does diversity look like in a world based on India?"  They could have looked at India and its history, or do what they normally do, and say that all colors of humans are present.

Instead, they saw "Asia", and said, "Diversity accomplished".

(Another possible term for this is "front door diversity".  If a world is different than what they see outside their front door, it is deemed diverse.)

On another note, Wizards of the Coast did a good job bringing in new Japanese artists to do art for Kamigawa, and new artists of Indian heritage to do art for Kaladesh.  The whole of Thrones of Eldraine has been spoiled, and as far as I can tell, there was no similar effort to find new artists from the United Kingdom (Arthurian legends) or Germany (Grimm's tales) to represent the culture of their people.

Because, don't you know, all white people are the same.  At least according to Wizards of the Coast.

(Aside: Which is more diverse, the Kenriths in the picture above, or Disney Jr.'s Sofia the First?  Because Sofia the First has one element of diversity that does not appear to be present in the Kenriths, class diversity.  Sofia and her mother were commoners.  The Kenrith mixed family both appear to be part of their world's 1%.)