Lee’s not “urban”: or how to write black characters the right way

Warning: This post contains SPOILERS. Read at your own risk. 

I said in my post on The Walking Dead last week that I wanted to take a week to focus on Lee and Clementine. I know, I know — what a novel idea!

Everyone who plays and enjoys this game has something to say about Lee, and there might be more articles written about Clementine than about the rest of the game. But there’s a good reason for it: Telltale did a bang-up job of creating two main characters that people genuinely care for. I have heard very, very few negative opinions about either character.

The most amazing part of this is that both characters are black.

Now, this isn’t amazing because they’re black (stay with me for a second), but because the games industry — and so many other mainstream entertainment industries like the movie and TV industry — seem intent on believing that most audiences (read: white, middle-class America) won’t care about a main character that doesn’t look or act exactly like them (read: the only money we actually care about is white, middle-class people money. No one else has money, right?).