yeah i wouldn't have a problem with making a character black unless it was in a place where it makes no sense
like rings of power's nomadic melting pot tribe makes zero sense, those people would all intermingle and then would all look the same with black, asian, white, etc heritage in all of them
game of thrones had different skin tones for different tribes and nobody complained about that.
yeah cleopatra was just stupid, idek why you'd want to claim cleopatra anyway, she was a manipulator who used appeal to coerce powerful men to do her favors. I guess they gotta make her black bc she probably had to be hot irl to pull that off, but that would be like excusing a female Mussolini purely because she was female.
yeah i don't remember people being too happy about the ancient one
people really weren't happy about the live action avatar the last airbender making everyone white