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In a show in which fire breathing dragons exist, is it really so impossible that race might be defined differently than how we define race? Or that skin color might be irrelevant to how they perceive pure bloodlines? Or that the affinity between the Valyrians and the Velaryons traces to a mythical past in which the progenitors of each allied to oust some malefactor, and that "purity" is defined as descent from one of those two heroes. Far from being "ludicrous," it is trivially easy to imagine a world in which is makes perfect sense.
That inference is both logically and empirically incorrect. Logically, the statement, "I do not want to portray all the black characters as evil or insane" does not imply, "therefore, all black characters must be paragons of virtue." Empirically, there are tons of shows -- The Wire and Empire leap to mind -- in which black characters in position of power are not paragons of virtue
It's possible to imagine such a world, it would just be a completely different world. The lore explanation for why the Valyrians have their very particular look is that they were an isolated population that interbred heavily and their uncommon features are the result of unusual mutations becoming widespread in the population. They define race the same way we do. If you want to just throw out the lore so that you can cast black people, all you have to do is say that. Instead they want to pretend this is an insignificant deviation from the lore. Why piss in my ears and insist that it's raining?
To clarify, not all the Targaryens were evil or insane, and in fact most of them weren't. But the ones who were evil or insane were rapists, murderers, malicious degenerates and psychopaths, and GRRM didn't feel comfortable letting any of those characters be black.
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