See, I think this is what it's about. Japan does stuff like Chocolove and having a Brazilian character be a literal monster from the wild (although from what I recall, Blanka's one of the nicer characters in the SF franchise so make of that what you will), but they don't seem to understand what they're doing. Probably because Japan was an isolated culture up until relatively recently and so doesn't have the same cultural memories. To them, Chocolove is just a wacky sidekick and not a representation of decades of systemic racism that killed and dehumanized millions. There's no malice, no intent.
Whether that's actually a valid excuse in modern times where acquiring this information is super easy is a conversation I'm not going to jump into, though.
