I think this makes my argument even more true. Imagine you have a budget and want to create a western/cowboy movie. You care about representation and want to have more black cowboys in the movies.

Option A: Take a story with a white cowboy, cast a black guy for him and shoot the movie.

Option B: Find a story of a black cowboy (and as you said there were many of them) and shoot a movie about it.

IMHO option A is patronizing while option B is empowering. Because option A assumes there were no black cowboys, there are no good stories too tell about black people.