I try to form my opinions by cause and effect. How does a term like "poc" helps with (sic) racism? I think you meant, it helps against racism. Because, funnily, I do think, it does help with racism. ;-) (Actually, lets not discuss this here)
I like the moral of the episode of South Park were they want to change the city flag. I want a world were the people are like the kids. They do not see race first, it is just an attribute, like height or eye color. So when discussin the old flag, they saw people lynching a person, not white people hanging a black person, and subsequently discussed, if it is ok to show a lynching on a flag. The adults of course only saw an racist act and did not want to discuss it at all, for fear of backlash, not matter what they would decide.
People do not know better what describes them better. They feel better. There is a difference. One is factual, the other emotional. Also describing is something from the outside. A 3 foot height person self describing as tall, does not make that person tall. (Pedantic at work here ;-)
Or whait, did you mean to say, people who are affected by something are to decide what do do about it? By what reasoning? Because that sounds like making the fox guard the hen house. Or the mindset of : I am offended, therefore I am right. Or asking the victim of a crime to be the judge. That is not how our society works.
About female representation. Why should I care about those "impacted" by it. The people impacted by fiction are the readers. Not the people "not represented" in it. But as I said, asking/checking for representation is a problematic mindset. It is asking and making problems. For this one, why should there be "representation" in the first place? How much? 50%? Why? Why not 1% or 75%? The things portraied in games do not have 50% equality, so why should games have it? Look at games with soldiers as heroes. The ball park estimate is 10% of military personel is female. That does not say front line fighters and is a contempary number that was lots lower in the past. So did anyone check, if 10% of games feature female fighers as heroes? And how do you count games, where you can select the gender of the hero?
And even if there were a misrepresentation of reality, that actually counts for nothing, as we are talking about fiction. And about stories. That means they are by definition out of the ordinary. If anything, I dare say, females are overrepresented in games, as it can make a story and is interesting. Hence the tagging of female-protagonist.