So what you seem to be saying is that although D&D started with a Eurocentric core, it has expanded since then (monk as a core class, etc). And you are happy to leave out the swords and sorcery subgenre that was also a main inspiration of D&D, because you don't "prefer" it. But making D&D not all about the white guys, that would be going too far?
If you read some of my other posts on artwork, you'll see that you've completely misread my position. Heck, if you read the post you quoted, you'll see you've either misread it or are misrepresenting me to an extent rarely witnessed outside politics.
Swords and sorcery is an integral part of D&D. I actually said we shouldn't try to completely purge it. Not all S&S art needs to be cheesecake (Lankhmar). There are also plenty of other sub-genres that make up the core of D&D. We should be able to see plenty of pictures that aren't cheesecake but still fit the core.
As far as Eurocentrism goes, I expounded on this at some length, elsewhere. Basically, I think the core technological and cultural biases in the core game should reflect idealized Mediterranean lore, mixed with some Western fictional biases (pulp, S&S, Tolkienesque high fantasy, etc.). That's the core. I really don't care what color the people's skin is, nor do I think it should be monochrome. I do think there are unshakable real-world connotations, so that I prefer Greyhawk's way of handling human ethnicity better than Eberron's.
Greyhawk was far from monochrome and didn't paint any human ethnicity as inferior. If you want my model for what I'd like to see in art, read the Greyhawk red and gold box. Draw that. The Flannaess was as multicolored as Khorvaire, but it was rich in varied culture while providing ample opportunity for characters of the "wrong color" to step into a role. Black paladins, pasty white monks, and brown barbarians were knit along side pseudo-French knights, reverent pseudo-Arabic merchants, pseudo-Chinese mystics, and pseudo-Vikings.
What Greyhawk
didn't do was allow for the "camera lens" to be centered on China, Ethiopia, or Syria. That's where the opportunity for expansion lies. But, I think it would be a bad idea to try to put that into the core PHB. Stick to one viewing angle, and maybe publish some
Oriental Adventures type books that refocus. Core D&D has so much "pseudo" in it's European, that even Viking, Carolingian, or HRE source books would substantively refocus the game.
The problem isn't with the original D&D tropes. The problem is with some art decisions that were made at various times. I'm not going to go back over all my books, but I don't recall any cheesecake in 1E. I think that came in the mid-1980s and into 2e, but don't hold me to that. Three decades later, where it crept in isn't so important. What is important is that the actual source material doesn't require art of nothing but white dudes and it never has.
