>>54930647Leon, Rose, Peony, Raihan, and Nessa all appear to be some kind of South Asian descent. The African descent characters are more like Iris, Lenora, Marshal, Grant, Ryme, Tyme, etc.
But yeah I get what you mean, OP. A lot of times people sweep dark skin races under black. I actually know a girl irl who said this white guy she got matched to in online dating assumed she was black when she was actually descended from India. That being said, official Pokemon media itself isn't trustworthy since they themselves will try to bend things to boost their marketability. Look at Brock. He's canonically light-skinned. Then for the anime they literally darkened his skin. I'm pretty sure it was to appeal to Westerners by making him pass off as black or something because Shudo said they were worried the Asian implication from his eyes would turn off Western viewers (which is why they decided to pull him early on too). They only brought him back on because it turned out he was popular with Western viewers. So to make a long story short, Pokemon only cares about characters passing off as whatever allows the most people to embrace them/minimizes backlash.