I was specifically responding to you second sentence. The historic answer does not apply there.

The problem wasn't that he was black, but that he was a black stormtrooper. George Lucas based the Empire on Nazi Germany, they were intended to be white supremacists, that is why we saw very few Aliens or humans of color as Imperial Officers in the original trilogy and subsequent expanded universe works. The First Order was an off-shoot of the Empire, so if the Empire was mostly white, it didn't make much sense for Finn, as a stormtrooper, to be black. If the actors for Poe and Finn changed places, there wouldn't have been barely a peep of criticism, because the issue wasn't with Finn being black, but with him being a black stormtrooper. People would have had no issue with a black Resistance pilot, because the Rebellion, which the Resistance is based on, was shown to be far more diverse than the Empire in the original trilogy and subsequent expanded universe works, both in terms of human skin tone and having far more Alien species. 

But what bothers me far more than the lore discrepancy there, is that Finn largely felt like a throwaway character that had little part to play in the overall storyline of the trilogy. He was put in for brownie points with the woke crowd, and then got crappy character development, with the Rey-Finn shippers being ignored in favor of catering to the rather cringey Rey-Kylo shippers. If Fin had actually been a good character with good character development, people would have forgotten their issues with a Black Stormtrooper real quick.

What does that have to do with being black? Seems like a badly written character, as if we haven't seen plenty of those in video games and other movie. Why is color important in this case? 

Can a bad black character ever just be that? Is a bad character that's a minority by definition someone shoved in for "woke points"?

Also just wanted to point out if you say the empire was mostly white then it is totally reasonable for any single person to be black. For Finn to not make sense the Empire needs to be entirely white, not mostly white. 

Certainly it impacts sales at least. There were probably people that identified with this type of story that bought the game that normally wouldn't buy a game like this. Then there are people who don't want a socially liberal viewpoint shoved down their throats who didn't buy the game that would have normally bought it.

In any case, I didn't buy it because I hate zombie games, first and foremost. If it was a genre I liked I wouldn't buy anything that forced me to watch scenes that are "progressive." But obviously they don't care about losing those sales for those that like zombie games as they probably picked up a bunch that wouldn't normally buy it to show them support. Evens out I guess.

That's in the game? Ha.

I just said why, the color of his skin wasn't an issue because the Star Wars fanbase was being racist, it was an issue because it was inconsistent with the Empire being depicted as White supremacists in the original trilogy, having a black stormtrooper caused a confliction with previously established lore. If John Boyega had been cast as a Resistance character rather than Stormtrooper,you would have heard barely a peep of criticism, people wouldnt have had an issues with a black resistance character, just like people had no issues with Lando Calrissian or with Darth Vader being voiced by a black man in the original trilogy.

The issue also lies with how they used him for marketing in the western countries to get their woke brownie points, then hid him away in China because they didn't want him to hurt their ticket sales there. It was clear that his being black was more so down to marketing than it was because they actually wanted a black character. It shows that Disney isn't afraid to be racist when it hurts their profits. 

While I agree with people in this thread on forced diversity I'll just say ya'll need to take a step back, let the creators create what they want and the people decide if it's good or not. If you don't want to support it don't but it's a bad road to go down, I went hard against it all before everythig started looking like forced diversity, even the genuine stuff. If you can smell it, sure don't drop the money and back away but sometimes your sense of smell betrays you and you may miss a gem that had genuine intentions or not but it still worked. Gotta go on a case by case basis and close your wallet when needed.

The opportunity to make more money and good PR (Social Media Angst).

I think so, but I don't think that was the case with Star Wars, as you can see from that movie poster. They used him prominently in western marketing because they wanted their token black character (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokenism), then hid him in the background in their China marketing because they were afraid he would hurt their sales there.

I said mostly white because there may have been a few black Imperial characters in pre-Disney expanded universe works (books/games/etc.), I honestly don't remember, they may have been all white in expanded universe works as well. I'm fairly sure that every Imperial Officer we saw in the original trilogy was white by design, specifically because Lucas was basing the Empire on Nazi Germany. I'm not seeing any non-white Imperial characters in the screenshots I'm finding online, nor do I remember there being any.

I guess you could make the argument that Imperials being white only applied to the officers, not the Stormtroopers, but since we never saw any Stormtroopers with their helmets off in the original trilogy, that's not a great argument for a black stormtrooper imo.

Since Disney took over, we have not only seen Finn, a black stormtrooper, but also black imperial officers, such as Admiral Rae Sloane, who was recently featured in the trailer for the latest EA Star Wars game. I just don't remember there being any pre-Disney.