If you are saying that Finn is a tick-box character because he's a black guy, then by implication you are saying that if people didn't expect a black/woman/transexual character they probably wouldn't make it into the movie. There are still plenty of prominent while males like Ren, Hux, Solo and it looks like 90% of the Republic but Finn and Rey are getting a crap load of attention because they are the new young, almost powerless characters in a new trilogy. I mean... WTF?

Tick-box mentality comes from the need to address past imbalances. I mean isn't Lando the only black guy in the whole original series? And Mace in the prequels? It's just a bad representation of humanity. Forget blacks, what about all the other races on Earth - they also don't feature. I've seen latin people going crazy because Oscar Isaacs was in the movie, and I've never even though that maybe they would also like to feature once in a while.

Who are the women... Leia, Aunt Beru, Mon Mothma...? It looks like no one in the Empire is a woman even though they're basically a galaxy wide army - no women on the bridges of Star Destroyers etc. Seriously, this is 50% of the human race not being shown.

If Yoda's species comes in green, yellow and blue and there were a few around I wouldn't agree if we only saw the green ones. It makes no sense, it's actually idiotic.

If there were five humans in SW it would be a trivial matter but there are hundreds and thousands and 99% are white. Honestly, I'm a white male and I don't give a shit if they made the protagonist an Ewok, but poor sampling of any species is such a myopic trait in anyone, and even focusing on Finn's race at all is beyond horrific. Actually focusing on the fact that there was a woman who had power was worse... That's shit from feudal times.