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This is an interesting question and one that as you point out has been much written and claimed about with regards to pirates supposedly having been much more egalitarian and progressive than mainstream society at the time, and this is far from a modern phenomenon as I’ve discussed a bit in this post with regards to their portrayal in some contemporary pirate fiction. But the latter was fiction and the reality was definitely not so black and white, so to speak. The pirate historian Benerson Little who I greatly respect and who I will be frequently using as a source here has this to say about the more modern myth of racially egalitarian pirates:

Golden Age pirates functioned as democracies, yet they chose to engage in the slave trade and treat most members of several peoples as worthy of nothing more than slavery. Only the few free blacks, mulattos, mestizos, zambos (mixed African and Native American), and Native Americans whom pirates permitted into their crews were granted the same rights and respect they accorded themselves. The rest they regarded as property, whether free or already enslaved.

…

The myth of Golden Age pirates as colorblind is fairly recent and has two origins. First, many scholars have promoted pirates of color to their rightful place in history. However, in doing this, they have often sought to diminish the role of the pirate as slaver, in order to improve the pirate’s image—less racist and more egalitarian, in other words. Second, Hollywood and popular fiction have also had a strong role, primarily by ignoring slavery as a critical aspect of piracy.

…

Authors and screenwriters have long realized that accurate depictions of how pirates treated slaves might put off much of the audience. The pirate as slaver does not fit the modern myth of the pirate as a social and political rebel—as a colorblind Robin Hood, so to speak. Even when Hollywood depicts pirates freeing oppressed populations (something pirates never really did), the populations are usually white. The Hollywood and video game ideals, seen for example in Rage of the Buccaneers and “Assassin’s Creed Freedom Cry,” of pirates freeing slaves out of a sense of moral obligation derived from anti-slavery beliefs, has no basis in fact, no matter how appealing these ideals are. (The Golden Age of Piracy: The truth behind the myths by Benerson Little, 200, 206-7)

Pirates and buccaneers did sometimes free slaves, and blacks did occasionally serve as roughly equal members of pirate crews, as did Native Americans and people of mixed race. These same pirates were usually at the same time extremely un-egalitarian and racist and not remotely opposed to things like slavery since they readily engaged in it themselves, often with astonishing brutality. This harsh contrast is what makes it difficult to draw any overarching narrative about how pirates generally viewed and treated race and slavery, except ultimately to conclude that they were opportunistic and generally willing to adjust themselves and cooperate with anyone if it was to their benefit under the circumstances. For every instance of pirates cooperating with and treating blacks and Native Americans with a surprising amount of equality and respect, there are far more instances of those same pirates committing the worst atrocities against other members of those same races. And for that matter, pirates and buccaneers treated other Europeans in a similar manner, treating some as friends and companions, while pillaging, torturing and raping others, sometimes based on nationality and sometimes just because they had the opportunity to do so.

Pirates and buccaneers were hardly unique in this regard either. For all the atrocities and genocides committed by Europeans against native peoples during their attempts at colonialism, there were usually an equal number of friendly relationships and alliances. Cortez didn’t bring down the Aztec Empire without the aid of thousands of native allies (which he again betrayed and turned against after they were no longer useful). Likewise, black Africans were not universally enslaved even in European society at the time and there were some free blacks and mulattos both in Europe itself and especially in European colonies after the 16th century who sometimes held minor positions of power and had some degree of wealth, sometimes owning slaves themselves. Native American, too, and people of mixed race were also not universally enslaved in European colonies and sometimes also held positions of relative power and independence in their own right, while at the same time inhabiting a European dominated society that subjected other members of their own race to the worst atrocities and oppression. And just as Europeans frequently oppressed other Europeans at many various times, often Africans and Native Americans enslaved and oppressed members of their own race as well with as much brutality as Europeans did.

My point here is not to downplay the evils of European slavery and racism in any way by pointing out that slavery wasn’t exclusively European nor were European relations with non-Europeans exclusively hostile, but to make it more evident that none of what pirates did was outside the norm for other Europeans of the time and the fact that pirates were sometimes friendly with individuals of other races does not remotely suggest that they had any higher moral opposition to slavery.

I think a good starting illustration of what I’m describing can be seen in the actions of one of the most famous early privateers, who while not technically a pirate is often grouped at least as a precursor to later ones who acted entirely outside the law since Drake’s actions toward the Spanish were ultimately not much different. Francis Drake began his career in the early 1560s on slave trading voyages under the command of his second cousin John Hawkins who came up with the ruthless idea of buying hundreds of slaves in Africa and then illegally selling them to Spanish colonies in the Caribbean (illegal because Spanish merchants claimed a monopoly on the slave trade in their colonies). From 1562 to 1565, Drake and Hawkins made two such highly successful voyages and profited immensely from it. Then in 1568, during a third such slave-trading voyage in the Caribbean, the Spanish navy under pressure to defend their slave-trading monopoly finally attacked the English flotilla under Hawkins and Drake while anchored in a bay in Mexico, destroying three out of five ships with the survivors limping back to England.

In revenge for this, Francis Drake set out for the Caribbean in 1572 with the intent purpose of raiding and plundering the Spanish colonies, and in one of his most famous actions during this raid he successfully ambushed and captured a treasure-laden Spanish mule train as it made its way across the Isthmus of Panama in 1573. In order to achieve this, Drake enlisted the aid of local Indians and communities of escaped African slaves called Maroons living in the forests of Panama who provided invaluable intelligence to him and agreed to act as guides and may have even fought alongside Drake against the Spanish. The Indians and Maroons in Panama clearly did this because they hated the Spanish who were directly oppressing them, and the English interlopers were more than happy to seek out their valuable assistance. So in conclusion: despite Drake’s former career as a brutal slave-trader, he was still happy to seek out and accept assistance from escaped black African slaves in order to plunder his primary enemies at the time which were the Spanish. If anything defines the sometimes-friendly relationships European pirates had with other races in the Caribbean on occasion, it is exactly this sort of opportunistic and circumstantial alliance.

Now I’m going to discuss many more examples of the interactions pirates and buccaneers had with other races in the Caribbean and elsewhere in the 17th and 18th centuries which is the period most commonly termed the golden age of piracy.

/u/Elphinstone1842’s comment is quite comprehensive on the so-called Golden Age, and much of it is true for Caribbean piracy in the nineteenth century as well.

Pirates in the 1800s still engaged in the slave trade (in fact, in an effort to cut down on illegal slave importations, the US Congress in the 1820s actually put slaving under the legal umbrella of piracy), and thus it is hard to take claims of egalitarianism all that seriously.

However, when reading accounts of actual piracies and pirate trials from the period, one gets a sense that black men in particular were treated far worse on land than they were at sea. In the case of the Plattsburgh pirates, who committed mutiny and piracy in 1816 near Norway and were hanged in 1819 Boston, the treatment of the black porter Samberson gives us a glimpse.

By all account Samberson was a full member of the schooner Plattsburgh’s (out of Baltimore) crew up while they sailed at sea, although his race and his station as the captain’s porter set him apart from the sailing crew to some extent. When the white sailors mutinied (killing the captain, first mate, and supercargo in the process), Samberson did not participate directly, but he did receive an equal share of the ship’s cargo of gold and silver after the act.

After the crew abandoned the Plattsburgh in Norway, Samberson sailed with two white crew to Denmark, but upon arrival the white men refused to lodge with him on the basis of his race, citing US racial norms as the justification. Samberson lodged separately (in a place that boarded both white and black men), and he was eventually responsible for reporting the piracy to the Danish police. They found him a credible witness and launched an international effort to apprehend the pirates based largely on his confession (and the subsequent confessions of his white former companions). The Plattsburgh pirates were gathered from around Europe and jailed together in Copenhagen as they awaited extradition to the US, and several autobiographical accounts suggest that although some of the white pirates resented Samberson, they did so because of what they saw as his betrayal, not exclusively because of his race.

Upon being returned to the US for trial, Samberson turned state’s evidence, and was not indicted as a consequence. He was especially useful in the trial because he was not implicated in the mutiny itself, but was an eye witness to the murder of the Plattsburgh’s captain. However, the defense attorneys argued that Samberson’s testimony was not credible because he was black, and that a conviction therefore could not be sustained based on his word. His race was conspicuous throughout the trial, and deference was given to the other state witness (the second mate, who saw none of the violence as he hid in the ship’s bread locker during he attack).

What we can tell, then, is that Samberson was treated better aboard the Plattsburgh than he was on land, perhaps because social norms were more flexible given the circumstances of maritime life. This pattern appears to be generally true in other cases as well. Racism, however, did exist on pirate ships. But it was modulated or attenuated in comparison to the racism displayed on land.