There’s not really a good option, in our current culture of endless remakes of the same crap.

Keep James Bond white and male: allows the writers to show specifically how his race and gender interact with the way that Western imperial espionage operates, and there’s an “authenticity” bonus there too. But this effectively prevents non-white/non-male viewpoints from emerging into the scene.

Change James Bond to non-white and/or non-male: gives a head-start to a minority-voiced character, but pretends that the race/gender of the previous iterations didn’t have any practical implications (basically an “I don’t see race” stance from the franchise).

Really, the question is: why are these the only two options? Why not a new character and/or franchise?

Why do we have to reuse an existing character who’s steeped in problematic context, and either perpetuate that (or use it as an excuse to specifically address it, which would be cool but maybe not that great for a popcorn action thriller?) or pretend it was never there?