Some pointed out that Masataka Ohta, Akira Saito, Hiroyasu Kurose, Takafumi Sakurai, and Yuka Tate-ishi were those who were involved with critiquing and even writing part of the original Oriental Adventures, and in fact, are some of the ONLY credited Asian individuals to EVER be credited on ANY OFFICIAL D&D release for direct contributions (apologies if I didn't get the names exactly right, I tried spelling them correctly, I apologize if I made any mistakes on it).
I think that's an important thing to note, but we also need to be careful with this. It's similar with the whole, "But Hattie McDaniel won an Oscar for Gone With the Wind, so we are really honoring her, right?"
I think you have an interesting and nuanced point, and it gets to a fundamental issue that is often ignored; who gets to speak for a community? In the past threads, we have seen Asian, and Asian-American, gamers say that they have (or have not) felt some, none, or a lot of offense.
Is the relevant community the Asian community, whose culture is being appropriated? If so, is it a mistake to say all Asians and fall into the same Orientalism trap that the book does (given that, for example, Korean culture and Indian culture is not being appropriated). Or is this really about the offense to Asian-Americans, given the primary market and the issues of discrimination in the West, which are very different than, say, issues of discrimination in Asia (in other words, there are different issues in Japan than America, as it should go without saying).
I say that not to engage in "whataboutism." Americans are familiar with a certain Washington football team that spent money and sponsored ... well, interesting and divisive polls in an attempt to say that a racist name wasn't really racist to the relevant community!
Instead, it's only to note that these issues can be complicated.
