Well, to be honest, Archon is clearly the darkest-skinned of the group.
and he's a pirate lord/smuggler/murderer.
So, if we really want to get into this, FD DID go there. And, I'm not surprised. Black folks(like myself) have always been cast as the bad guys. The "blacks and crime" connection has been, frankly, pounded into the heads, indoctrination-style, of people across the world.
Meanwhile, white men and women in suits are the ones who orchestrated the global crash in 2008.(mostly) white bankers are the ones who launder money for the global drug trade. These are the people who took your job, your house, your livelihood, if it was lost. The biggest "gangsta's" on this earth are lily-white and have exactly zero chance of being "stopped and frisked".
But if you ask someone what a "criminal" looks like, they'll come back at you with the image of someone who could be found in any of Snoop Dogg's videos.
So, even though I don't think for a moment that Braben and co. had any racist intention here..there may be unconscious bias showing itself. how can it not? Every person on earth with access to TV and internet has been told, both overtly, and covertly, that we black folks are thugs, killers, low-class, etc etc etc. how can anyone expect that not to reflect in works such as this?
I think it's sad that we had to even get into this. It's a sci-fi universe,and racism shouldn't even be a thought. These fictional characters should have moved past racism at this point. I think, in the ED universe, they HAVE moved past it.
The real question is, have WE moved past it?
The answer is quite clear.