And of course she was actually just presenting a more representative, complete conception of a world rather than just white dudes in space, or with swords.
Exactly. While the newest Earthsea book can feel like they're getting a bit heavy-handed, for the most part she just wrote the characters, and they happen to not be "white dudes in space", but you might not even notice.
It's notable, I think, that a lot of white people (me included) didn't/don't even pick up on the color of the characters in Earthsea. But the descriptions are there, black on white. Le Guin herself wrote about that after the TV-series:
> I think it is possible that some readers never even notice what color the people in the story are. Don’t notice, don’t care. Whites of course have the privilege of not caring, of being “colorblind.” Nobody else does.
But that also speaks to the fact that didn't write stereotypical black characters, or stereotypical women. She just wrote people that happened to be black, or women, and sometimes the color of their skin or gender is just casually mentioned well into the story. Only when it is essential to the plot (like in Left Hand of Darkness) will she make an point of it.
