I would disagree, Kvothe's gender and sexuality are definitely a big factor, as this is a coming-of-age story full of first love and first experiences, it would change almost all of his interactions and tons and tons of plot stuff if either his gender or sexuality would change, not to mention that most fans do want the story they fell in love with to be the one that gots adapted, and not a version a certain director or show runner wants to write featuring his/her own preferences.

Now, race is an interesting factor, because while I do think Kvothe's looks are iconic and they should remain the same, if we tweaked the story just a little bit, changing his race wouldn't take away from the plot elements or the relationships (if done right); however we would run into two problems, 1) we would break external logic by giving flame-red hair to anyone not snowwhite (or snowwhite with a bit of red), because the in-world logic has been set up that - for humans at least - genetics work the same way than for us, and that pigments correspond to natural pigments in our world. 2) this would feed into the trend that the white character changed to non-white is often the red-hair (which people say is not that big of a deal, but gingers have a history of being mistreated for their pigments too, and they do tend to get whack representation / they are pushed out of jobs while non-red head actors take their roles and fill the screens with bottle-reds)

I guess if you really wanted to change races in kkc, you could flip everything, and make cealdish people white, keep modegan people mediterranian, keep Yllish people white with red hair, keep the Adem white with blonde hair, and make everyone else african-descent. Than most of the university and Newarre could be played by African-americans.