>>58119061
The gen 1-4 regions are just Japan to me.

Anyway Ruby might initially come off as racist, he's the insensitive autist type who can accidentally say rude or politically incorrect things. (Both he and Sapphire start out socially inept, but Sapphire's empathy helped her adjust and make friends faster.) But I doubt Ruby's actually bigoted, he used to live in cities and travelled to multiple different regions, so he's used to meeting foreigners. He's also disconnected from his roots (a lot of his character is just the "RS protagonist moved from Johto to Hoenn" thing taken too seriously) and seemingly has a mild form of outgroup preference (a mental illness that Sapphire doesn't seem to have). So I could see him being "colorblind" and extra nice to anyone who compliments his contest performances. But when shit hits the fan, he'll backstab anyone and everyone regardless of background because Ruby's priority isn't any group, his priority is just Sapphire.

Meanwhile it's Sapphire who has always lived in the countryside, and being so connected to nature and the land, she places high importance on Hoenn (her home region/heritage). Which can be extrapolated to loyalty to her ethnic group, as ingroup preference is natural and Sapphire doesn't ignore her natural instincts. It doesn't mean she hates everyone else, it's just preference. In fact she'd even go out of her way to treat everyone as equally as possible just to be kind, even though it could be a contradiction.

But her instincts may also contradict her desire to help the vulnerable. So if a situation occurs where an underprivileged racial minority group suddenly has interests competing with Sapphire's own ethnic group, and she's asked to pick sides. This will create cognitive dissonance inside her and depending on (You)r perspective, a moral dilemma. One that Sapphire might not know how to handle, as canonically she isn't even meant to be facing complicated moral dilemmas, that's Ruby's role. Also she's dumb.