No, sometimes it's necessary, especially when you're scene-setting in a other-temporal sense. But I do heartily agree that back-seating/demonizing characters from a particular culture while you're simultaneously riffing on that culture is creepy. Where The Reapers... might run into trouble with some SJ types is that I don't really recall anybody being identified as any race/culture other than default weird-ass Midwest/Southern U.S. white, but there are certainly no Magical Anybodys or Evil Evil Anybodys. It's just compromised people vs. zombies, Sunday Sunday Sunday.