Days of Future Piff
Superstar
One of the main reasons I stopped buying comics was because of the lack of black characters and the automatic pushback the community gave when new characters were introduced.
But when you ask people why there aren't more black characters, everyone wants to label YOU the racist
More black characters are needed in comics. The problem is making sure that they're good characters who are actually interesting. Simply making a bunch of "diverse" characters just to pander without really giving them fleshed out character arcs and personalities isn't the way to go. That does nobody any favors.
Since Cyclops was mentioned, I remember Claremont stating that he initially had Scott marry Madelyne Pryor in order to retire his character. They were supposed to fly off into the sunset and let other characters take the reins. Scott would return every now and again, but only for emergencies and catastrophic events. However, the higher-ups at Marvel saw an opportunity to franchise and wanted a sister-book that they could market, given Uncanny X-men's popularity. They retconned Jean's death behind Claremont's back (she was supposed to stay dead), and had Scott leave his wife and child in X-factor #1 (also not by Claremont). They waited until it was too late to veto or change anything before the books were released before telling Claremont what the plan was. At that time, he was so angry that he was ready to quit the book entirely.
The Inferno storyline and the subsequent character assassination of Madelyne Pryor (turning her into a crazed demonic supervillain who tried to sacrifice their infant son) was Claremont and Louise Simonson's attempt to resolve the whole mess.