James Patterson Confirms He Uses "Separate But Equal" Process for Alex Cross Series

Maintains That He is Entitled to Write a Black Character

After being called out for attempting to write realistically as a black man, James Patterson doubled down and said there is nothing wrong with him doing the Alex Cross series.

In fact, the typewriter is just as good as the one he uses for the Michael Bennett books or The Women’s Murder Club.

Whatever Patterson’s writing process is, he’s treading on dangerous ground in the Twitter era/Wokeism. Even though readers might have turned a blind eye to Patterson authoring Cross in the 90’s (or perhaps they just didn’t have the “eyes” to see that something might be wrong with it), the current climate makes a few of his critics uneasy.

Patterson came to his own defense: “I consult several African-Americans before I write anything for Alex Cross. In fact, I haven’t written a word of my own books since 2001, so there!”

The old “the ghostwriters do it” defense. Classic Patterson!

He continued.

“Not only is the typewriter the same, but the railcar the ghostwriters ride to work in is the same, the schools their children go to are the same, the drinking fountains are the same…” he trailed off.

Uh-oh. Sounds like he is describing Jim Crow.

Also, somebody warn him that the French word for “ghostwriter” is fantome ecrivain, which is also the word French people use as their n-word. Thank you to Reddit’s r/Today I Learned for explaining how the usage came from ghostwriters being compared to slaves.

James Patterson is the latest author to come under fire for misrepresentation, writing from the perspective of another race. Patterson “writes” the Alex Cross series from the realistic, first-person point of view of an African-American detective in Washington DC.

Some say calling out Patterson is long overdue. Some say he should get a “free pass” because he’s been doing it since 1993. Others say that free pass comes because Patterson is white and his franchise is so successful.

His readers might see nothing wrong with it, or just might not care enough.

One thing is clear…Patterson doesn’t see anything wrong with it. Take his actual interview with longtime journalist Claire Allfree (Telegraph, Metro) where he actually defends and applauds himself for creating Alex Cross:

"When I started writing, every Hollywood movie had a black guy with a boombox on his shoulder. I grew up in a small town that was heavily black; I had a lot of black kids as my friends. So do I have the right to write a black character? Sure I do.”

Just, wow.

In the rest of the interview, Patterson talks about (and attempts to further defend) how his publisher wanted to trick readers into thinking the author was black by not putting his picture anywhere on the books. You can read the full interview here.

So that would demonstrate that way back in 1993 his publishers would recognize that there wasn’t something quite right with Patterson writing for Alex Cross. They either knew it was “wrong” and decided to lie by omission or they were just trying to avoid any negative feedback, however small it might have been.

Patterson did not receive any flack. In fact, he was rewarded with a Hollywood contract for a couple of movies. Morgan Freeman winked at the misappropriation by starring in Kiss the Girls (1997) and Along Came a Spider (2001); Tyler Perry reprised the role as recently as 2012 in the doomed attempt at a franchise reboot in Alex Cross. Luckily that ended the franchise. The first film did so poorly that its sequel Double Cross was cancelled during pre-production. Who knows how many more films Tyler Perry would have regrettably made as Alex Cross had it been a success?

Yet, Morgan Freeman and Tyler Perry have never spoken out about their decision to play Alex Cross in those films. But has anyone ever asked them the tough question: “In today’s climate, do you regret playing a black character originally written by a white author?” Maybe they never will be asked that, but maybe they should.

Let’s try this on, though. I wonder what their reaction was to recent comments by James Patterson where he said that it’s “increasingly difficult for white male writers to obtain jobs in publishing because of racism.”

For those of you keeping track, Patterson’s comments are not only entirely misguided and based in his white privilege, but factually incorrect. In a 2020 study by The New York Times Opinion desk found that 89% of all books published in 2018-2019 were published by white authors.

And how about Freeman and Perry’s own industry, film and television. Have whites been cut out there due to racism? A study by the Writers Guild West found that 77% of all screenwriters are white and of them, more than 50% are male.

What do Freeman and Perry think? Do they still silently support Patterson? By not speaking up, that is exactly what they are doing. They must agree with him. Can they relate to Patterson’s plight as black actors who struggle to find meaningful work in Hollywood due to systematic racism in the film industry?

Perhaps their entire success within the last 30 years is due to the fact that before Patterson wrote his first Alex Cross books, they were just cast in movies as “guys holding boomboxes on their shoulders.”

We tried to ask these questions, but both our calls to Morgan Freeman (maybe getting another piercing) and Tyler Perry (maybe making another Madea film) went unanswered.

But God bless the interviewer Sarah Baxter, who in that original notorious interview with James Patterson for the UK’s Sunday Times, actually did press him to further account for Alex Cross specifically.

On that subject, Patterson was glib. He said “I just wanted to create a character who happened to be black.”

Ok, well people want to do a lot if things, but often times common sense kicks in.

He also added that he has not encountered any criticism for the decision “to make Alex Cross black.”

Well maybe it’s time. Mr. Freeman and Mr. Perry, you’re up.