See, now that presupposes that media companies are putting so much effort into making sure that there are enough minorities being realistically portrayed in the work that it’s taking away time and money from writing the actual story. My experience has been that any diversity rep in bad stories is just to have an actor from a marginalized demographic plopped in. And the rep we see extends from the bad writing instead of the other way around.
That’s especially the case with queer characters in Disney canon. Usually the best we can hope for is a background/side character who will say something in passing that suggests they might be queer, or who kisses someone of the same sex in an unimportant throwaway scene so it can easily be cut out for overseas releases (only to get banned anyways).
Meanwhile, Disney aggressively suppresses and attempts to kill unabashedly pro-queer works such as The Owl House and Nimona. Both such works revolve around queer rep and were critically acclaimed. Disney heavily resisted allowing the former to enter production as a queer series, relented, and then pulled the plug on it after a few seasons despite how well-received it was; and it shelved the latter, bought the studio that acquired it and shelved it again, and it was only by the grace of Netflix picking it up that it ever saw the light of day.
Clearly there is an appetite for honest, in-depth exploration of stories revolving around people who aren’t straight, cisgender white guys. But late stage capitalist megacorps aren’t going to be the ones taking the lead on it due to the economic status quo and the built in incentives that stem from it.
Of course, I see that earlier you also presupposed that companies making a good-faith effort to consider hiring more minorities to their teams must mean that qualified people are being passed over in favor of unqualified people. So I’d recommend maybe unpacking why you seem to believe both presuppositions are true.
