It is how Lego originated. See discussion at [0]. Early on they had a limited palette and would use yellow for caucasians and asians and at times used black for POC and red for native americans. The time where everything was yellow is also quite limited - and there was pushback from non-cacuasians until they were forced to include skin colours in NBA sets.
[0] https://www.quora.com/Why-do-LEGO-minifigures-have-yellow-he...
1978-2003 is hardly a limited timespan in the history of LEGO!
> and there was pushback from non-cacuasians until they were forced to include skin colours in NBA sets.
right, because this is when they decided to make minifigs look like real people, instead of imaginary, race-neutral-ish, yellow people, once they got into licensing the appearance of real people for their minifigs!
then you take the history of emoji into account and you see that that doesn't really work as an explanation at all. it's like you (and everyone else who makes this inane argument) are trying to make something that's not white-people-centric, white-people-centric, just so you can complain about it being white-people-centric.