I know this topic has been discussed to death and then some, but I haven't yet seen the following opinion expressed here:

Broadly speaking, I have no problem with playable black or female characters in videogames. After all, videogames are enjoyed by people of all shapes and sizes--why shouldn't they be represented? I doubt any reasonable person would disagree. My next point may be more contentious, however.

While there are useful ways to promote diversity in gaming, attempts at doing so can also prove counterproductive and even harmful. I think that the black female Nazis in COD WWII's multiplayer fall into the latter category.

So what kind of character diversity is helpful, and why does COD WWII's fail to be so? My argument is as follows:

Videogames are constructed fantasies that are meant to absorb the player. A game that is set in a fantastical post-nuclear war wasteland, for example, is well-made only insofar as its mechanics, art, and other assets engage the player in that fantasy. Importantly, this DOES NOT mean such a game ought to be realistic. However, it DOES mean that it ought to be believable. I will call the (often unrealistic) believability good games evoke authenticity. So, for example, while the post-war wastelands of fallout are far from realistic, they often feel authentic due to the internal consistency with which they are presented.

If a good fallout game is one that engages a player in the fantasy of surviving the post-apocalypse, a good WWII game is one that engages a player in the fantasy of fighting in WWII. There are many things we KNOW about what a post-nuclear world would look like. For example, we know that its landscape would be quite barren. Because of this, if the next fallout game is set in a lush environment (assuming that the time passed since the apocalypse is insufficient for such a landscape to be believable), players will find it difficult to engage with the fantasy it presents. A lush environment would be no less realistic than some of the other absurd elements presented in fallout games (laser guns, power armor, and ghouls immediately come to mind), but it would make the game feel far less authentic because a barren setting is a definitive and necessary aspect of the post-nuclear apocalypse.

In my view, black female Nazis in a WWII game are analogous to a lush environment in a fallout game. If the player knows anything at all about Nazis (and they likely do), they know that black female soldiers would be absolutely antithetical to Nazi values. Simply put, a black female Nazi is not a believable Nazi. Is their presence any less realistic than killstreaks and COD's fast-paced gunplay? Of course not. Unlike those things, though, diverse nazis directly contradict the WWII fantasy COD WWII should attempt to evoke in the player.

A more relevant example might better prove my point. There is a reason that there won't be any jump boots in COD WWII, and it isn't that jump boots wouldn't be realistic in a WWII setting--few of COD's mechanics would be. Instead, jump boots would be so inconsistent with the WWII fantasy that they would render the game inauthentic. So too, would female Nazis.

When is diversity in games useful, then? When it is internally consistent with the fantasy a game is trying to present. Black female Nazis are simply inconsistent with the WWII fantasy, and they therefore have no place in COD WWII.

TLDR: videogames typically try to present a believable, "authentic" fantasy to the player, and COD WWII is no exception. While black female Nazis are no less realistic than some of COD WWII's other features, they are uniquely inconsistent with the WWII fantasy it presents, and they therefore make the game feel inauthentic.