I really deeply agree with this. I travel extensively for work. I see all kinds of cities, neighborhoods, and try to engage with people wherever I go.
Something that is incredibly obvious as you travel in the US specifically is how terribly uneven the schooling and opportunity metrics are, due to them being funded primarily by local property taxes instead of an equal playing field. So what you end up with is schools in poorer areas of economic strength have MUCH less diverse drama/STEM programs, if any. This isn't purely down to race either, but it's no secret that dominantly black or hispanic populated school districts are often poorly funded and staffed. Not going to be any better for white kids in a terrible school, poverty-stricken school district, but it's definitely more common for black and hispanic children to grow up with worse metrics for education as a whole, and the first things to be cut are drama and STEM.
So by the time you get to where you have aspiring VAs (which is going to take a certain amount of economic support to begin with!), you're very likely going to see a greater percentage of these people coming from school backgrounds that supported their career path way back when they were younger. Similar to how you get STEM programs dominated by more affluent districts feeding the pipeline of candidates and employees.
We have a broken society in terms of economic fairness, and by the time it gets allllllll the way to some indie game dev studio trying to find some VAs to say a few lines for their title, the problem is already a pretty big one.
I'd support a non profit group to fund outreach from POC VAs to speak at schools across the nation, to share their experiences in how they got where they are, how they feel and think about the industry and where it's going, etc. I feel may don't even know this is a possibility for them. But that would still be the smallest tip of the iceberg compared to the structural issues facing our children growing up in so many of our failing schools. It's just easier for many wealthier white people to ignore if they are ignorant of just how bad schools are for so much of our population. It's so stupid, because it affects all of us, and we should do better by our kids and each other.
