You know, this is one of those things where I was always completely in the dark. I never looked too closely at the cover art when it depicted to iconics, so I always assumed that Regdar was black. Even after 'playing' the interactive DVD, I still assumed he was black, and I was totally cool with it.
My personal preferences are usually to play the meat shield, usually as a white guy, but not for any particular reason. One of my friends in a D20 Modern game I ran played a black man. He's not black in real life. Another one of my friends always plays a female with red hair in any game we play, whether it be an RPG or an MMO. Yet another friend of mine always plays a male character who is quite a bit older (I think the median age he plays is about 45). My wife likes to play axe wielding foul-mouthed dwarves.
My point here is that I agree with Monte that players can and do see beyond themselves, and that it is absolutely a good thing to use characters of a variety of ethnicities and races as iconics.