I think Han Solo is a good example to use here. He’s an iconic character, whose racial heritage doesn’t have a significant impact on his character. I have three of these minis from Imperial Assault:
Photo snagged from Fantasy Flight.
My students often will create narratives including essentially “themselves as Han Solo”
Yes, and if you’ve got three minis, there’s no problem with painting one of them in Han Solo’s skin and hair color, and two others in different colors. And then students can pick the one that fits the image they want. In fact, buying multiple ones might have been a good recommendation if you hadn’t already followed it.
You beat me to the mini pic. 
There’s a line between pandering to young people (bad), and fostering engagement (good). Teachers and youth development workers have to walk this line constantly, and it can be very tricky.
Downside to that solution is these minis are $10-15 each, though apparently that didn’t stop @bengeile here. 
@bengeile is a teacher and lives off the kindness of his FLGS making donations to his classroom 
.
Although, in my higher income days, I can totally see myself justifying a triple Han purchase.
I certainly see that that’s an issue and one that would have to be considered. Let me just say that having more than one of the iconic characters is a solution if you can afford it.
I know you are enjoying painting in quarantine, but could you solve the problem by making cardboard miniatures with photos of diverse people on them? Kind of like GURPS Cardboard Heroes, but you make your own by pilfering images of actors from the internet. Actors, because they might be in a costume suitable for a fantasy or science fiction game.
My mate Keith started this years ago, because several of his players said “My character looks like such-and-such an actor”, and then they went to parallel worlds where there were different versions of themselves, so he just found a photo of the same actor in a different role.
Alternatively, if you have any green stuff/milliput and some sculpting skills, you could add a beard or a hat or something to the Han Solo to make him look less like Han Solo.
EDIT: Years back, when I was painting darker skin tones on my ‘white dude’ cyberpunk minis to get a more diverse cast, they didn’t come across as blackface. Instead, they look like British Asians (translation for Americans - people of Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi ethnicity). This won’t help with African-American representation, obviously.
I’ve done something similar to this. I had writing students create a character description, and then the art teacher had her students make standees for them.
I then did the same for my nieces.
I’m sure you know this, but these aren’t in any way equivalent issues.
Han Solo is one of… fifty?.. significant white characters in the SW canon. Lando is one of… four?
Additionally, it is worth pointing out that in neither case is their skin-tone a significant element of the character: if Hermione can be Black without losing anything in her character, Han could be Black. The actor who portrayed him is not Black, but that’s not an absolute: future iterations of Han could be Black (or blue or green or whatever) and it would have no impact on how Han is presented.
“But Han isn’t Black” isn’t a viable argument: unless it is a critical component of his life that his skin-tone is light, then there’s no reason he can’t be recast/re-written to have any skin-tone that the director/writer wants.
Now you could argue the reverse for Lando, and I would say that if you had as many PoC characters in SW as you have white characters, sure, go for it. But casting Lando as white removes a very significant amount of representation (see above note re: importance of representation) and adds nothing of value: recasting Han as not-white would do double duty as both adding representation and losing nothing by the recasting.
/rant
Print a load of random people out, call them all ‘The Doctor’ regardless.
I work with teenagers in a creative writing class. I have absolutely heard the phrase “My character is basically Han Solo, but also The Doctor, but also basically me?”
I would worry that it may feel patronizing to simply use a different color palette when painting recognizable miniatures. Perhaps that’s me over-thinking it?
For me, they clearly are equivalent issues. I do not know otherwise, and I think the claim that it is otherwise is unsound.
I really don’t want to turn this into another huge debate, so I think it might be just as well to leave it at that. I’m not a progressive; I’m a libertarian and an individualist, and I oppose all forms of collectivism, including racism. So it’s perhaps not to be wondered at that we disagree. I just want to register that not everything has the same view on this, and you should not assume agreement that may not be there.
I’d say that while Han Solo’s whiteness isn’t at all important to the character, his Harrison Ford-ness is pretty integral, at least for anyone who’s watched the movies. Harrison Ford’s the reason we like Han Solo in the first place, not his skin colour, but Harrison Ford’s skin happens to be white. Similarly, Lando isn’t just any black guy, he’s specifically Billy Dee Williams, which is integral to Lando’s character.
I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong about recasting characters, but it seems like the weakest way to represent. I’d rather just make up fun new heroes who are black, asian, hispanic, etc. than change existing ones (and I would give them actually good arcs, yes, I’m looking at you, Finn). Star Wars is huge. There’s as many stories to tell there as you want, in tens of thousands of years of history. No need to retread the same ground, tell whatever story you like!
Thank you for saying this. I was tryingto come up with a way to voice a similar feeling and couldn’t quite get there in a way that would have been useful. You’re absolutely right, the issue is not the same. We’re also talking about fictional character’s who aren’t real so changing race or gender doesn’t matter UNLESS doing so removes what is already extremely limited representation in media.
Edit/Addition: A Han Solo mini being painted to be a black person isn’t the same as black face. We’re talking about 1) a fictional character who could literally have been anyone and 2) a plastic toy version of a fictional character, so we’re pretty far removed from reality here. If we’re arguing that’s the same as black face or comparable I’m not sure this thread has much left to say.
Also just to touch on the first topic this thread started with - I’m sure it’s been said and better, but games that have colonialism as a core mechanic are definitely hugely problematic if not outright racist. Intent doesn’t really matter when you’re talking about a historical practice that employed forced assimilation, slavery, genocide and plenty more. Gamifying that has always felt pretty iffy to me, and most of those games have very little appeal.
Hi lovelies
Please remember we’re debating issues of racism and not people’s individual beliefs.
Hugs.
But if somebody was, say, of the position that racism-doesn’t-exist, should that go unchallenged?
Look, I get it, you can’t teach somebody who doesn’t want to learn. But we should, as a community, express that those sorts of positions are… wrong, right? If only in opposition to those who might otherwise think that incorrect positions like that are acceptable?
Gah. Heckles, all the way up. Sorry.
Edit: replaced an incorrect word (support) with the correct word (opposition) for clarity.
Thanks for the reminder, @RossM 
The risk of blackface come in when a combination of the detail of a mini and the limitations of a painter’s skill results in a miniature looking like Harrison Ford in minstrel show make-up. This is something that could be resolved with mindfulness, and is why I don’t have students paint minis. (also I’m an English teacher, so it would be hard to justify the class time for it.)
I agree with this.
The idea that racism doesn’t exist can’t just be allowed to be out there unchallenged.
It’s all well and good to think that all things are a matter of opinion, but some things aren’t really - racism existing isn’t an opinion. It’s choosing the right or wrong answer on a quiz.
