Hi there. I joined SKMB just so I could vent a little about how badly King does African American characters.
Before I get started though, I'll preface this by saying I've been a fan for a very long time. He's a brilliant storyteller and ironically, what I like best about his writing is how convincingly he develops characters. He imbues them with so many specific and relatable characteristics that even when they're despicable, I'm still entranced by them.
That said, he may know people, but he doesn't know African American people.
What bugged me immensely was how Jerome's "blackness" is such an essential aspect of his personality. I've been black all my life and have never been around African American people who constantly manifest their ethnicity the way King's characters do. It's a terrible stereotype.
For example, when Jerome first appears in a meeting with Hodges, King writes "[t]he young man [Jerome] meets him halfway across the lawn, one fisted hand held out. Hodges bumps knuckles with him, thus acknowledging Jerome's blackness." Why on earth does Hodges need to "acknowledge his blackness"? I don't expect anyone to give me a fist bump as an acknowledgment of my blackness and if someone did, I'd balk. And before you say it's because I'm a woman, my black husband would balk, too.
Or (and this is my favorite): "Jerome is a Harvard man these days, and his alter ego--the jive-talking Tyrone Feelgood Delight--seems to have been retired." I know lots of African Americans who have graduated from Harvard but not one who had a schizophrenic "jive-talking" alter ego in high school. If you read carefully, almost every appearance by Jerome is marked by some mention of his blackness.
And this is true for Bellamy's parole officer the very large, very black and very bald McFarland, who speaks in dialect -- at least in Bellamy's mind. In fact, when Bellamy is leaving Home Depot and some guy calls to him, he's relieved because the "voice is young. And white." Certainly McFarland could be black and not sound "black," right? Just like an East Asian guy can sound white and so can a guy from Mexico.
Now does this mean there aren't plenty of people who fit into stereotypes? Of course there are ... but why perpetuate them? In 2015 don't we have some moral/ethical/human obligation to dismantle them? Why do we stay trapped in this narrow definitions of race, gender, and ethnicity.
And what really gets me is HOW MANY PEOPLE (his editors, friends, family) cosigned on these stereotypes before the novel was published. I wonder if even ONE of them even noticed. And I also wonder if even one of them is African American.
I've always noticed this is King's work and kept sweeping it under the rug as an anomaly but it happens too often and I can't let him off the hook anymore.
I expect more from him. I demand more from him.