How do you "race swap" some fukking turtles who have NEVER been shown to be white in any form and still AREN'T black now. They're just turtles moving through NYC under hologram projection of Black teens.
All teenagers love pizza. And their names have absolutely nothing to do with their identity. It was just a random whim by the creators.
“We thought about giving the turtles Japanese names but we couldn’t think of authentic-sounding Japanese names. So, we thought why not name them after Renaissance artists? We picked the names we were most familiar with and went with it.”
In the comic, Splinter names them after his favorite artists. Nothing to do with their identity or NYC Italians whatsoever.
I tried to look up "TMNT race" right now and found entire comicfan boards where they never even discuss them being Italian, it's all an argument over whether they're Japanese, Black, or White.