Frankly, I didn't see any insinuations in Cedarwolf's comments, just a sincere request. The same could apply to African, Arab or any other culture. If prople are going to agonize over "realism," why not strive to depict these things accurately? I think It really does have to be part of the artist's motivation though. Most buyers are unlikely to know the difference unless they are familiar with the culture in question. It's no different from the fact that most people are not going to know (or necessarily care) about the finer points of accuracy in a military model etc. We do have to accept the reality that after generations of Charley Chan, Chief Screaming Eagle (or even Jersey Shore) etc. people have distorted images. So much of what we "know" about people and places outside our experience is based on popular culture or extremely limited examples.

There's no malice involved in most cases, just people not knowing what they don't know and not necessarily beint too motivated to alleviate ouir ignorance. I'm not sure how many people are going to take the time to really authenticate their designs, but it certainly doesn't hurt to voice the idea. With the internet, the resources are available, but even then you probably have to put in some effort to separate the wheat fro the chaff.

The point about fantasy is true. In many cases, people are probably just trying to make something that evokes a particular theme, and hitting on some key triggers - tack a few feathers and beads on some pants and its Native American, add a turban to your outfit and its Indian etc. Likely much of the Arab themed stuff we've seen in the past few years isn't completely accurate either. It would be nice if people would add a disclaimer ala "not to scale," but that's probably not going to happen. There's nothing wrong with that. People are free to create the art they want and shouldn't be required to slavishly strive for accuracy. OTOH, if someone offers advice on that would garner you a 'wow they got that right' from people who know, then that's probably a good thing, whether you choose to follow it or not. I've seen far worse 'you've got to render with X,Y,Z or your images are crap' posts.

I doubt that anyone is trying to be offensive. It's more like not coming from cultures so far removed from their traditional roots and where such things have been replaced by mass culture, they can't imagine anyone being offended. If you do care about such things, you're likely to be labled as overly sensitive. Somehow, we need to find a median between embracing diversity and glorying in our homogenziation. If we can't get that right here, there ain't much hope for the rest of the world.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken