For years I was thankful for Patterson providing a black male lead for a franchise series when such a thing was a rarity in the publishing industry (it still kind of is tbh). As a person who lived in the Washington DC area myself, I did not think Patterson had a great grasp on black Washington (unlike someone like George Pelecanos, A white novelist who understood black communities of both DC and Baltimore and carried that understanding to his duties as one of the writers of "The Wire"). But I never held it against Patterson for having a more superficial grasp of the community, I was simply appreciative of his willingness to offer the world a complex black guy as a focus of his brand of storytelling. That's something black female authors, who were/are far more numerous than black male authors, would never do. Most of all I was delighted that Patterson's Cross novels were huge best sellers and being consumed by readers who otherwise would not read books centering on black characters unless the stories fell under the category referred to these days as " trauma porn." I don't think Patterson was writing for white audiences; he just happened to write books that drew white readers in part because his white face could be seen on the cover folds.
As for Hodge, my objection is his going on some show with some black host and trying to play it off as if the Alex Cross series was some franchise that was beloved and consumed largely by black people. According to Hodge when he was approached by the producers for the show he informed them he wasn't interested unless there were certain assurances in how they were going to handle the Cross series, he referred to it as doing right by "our stories". This implied a sense of ownership, as if the Alex Cross franchise was some sacred text for the black community. You hear this from black folks a lot when Hollywood is about to do an adaptation of black written literature or movies about real black people. The Cross series doesn't fall under any of those categories. It wasn't Easy Rawlings by Walter Mosely for God's sakes. Nevertheless the black audience Hodge had been speaking in front of did their normal thing of uttering their approval of his words like they were in church responding to a preacher. [Sidenote: This is similar to the nonsense you see about Miles Morales on black twitter. Miles was not created by a black writer but black people who never knew of the character until the animated movies all over Twitter making demands about the skin color of the actor who will eventually get cast as Miles and about how he should have only black girlfriends.]
This is something Hodge tends to do when a microphone is put in front of his face. He is not some extreme militant, but when he gets an opportunity he will bring up the race factor when, in my opinion, it is unnecessary. This is why I was somewhat weary over his casting in the first place. I could envision him as one of those black male actors suggesting behind the scenes of his character only having black love interests even though Cross in the novels had romantic attachments with women of various racial backgrounds. Hodge is a good actor though and is more age appropriate than Morgan Freeman who brought the character to life on the big screen.
I hope that clears things up on my part.
