It's not necessarily about being PC. *points up at own comment* It's like -- if you can't give characters depth, and if you only write them as stereotypes, you're inviting other people who haven't had much or any experience with this culture to see people of that culture as stereotypes, and not people. I choose not to propagate that, when and where I can.

You do have a really good point about the comparative lack of characters of color in English literature. The first academic presentation I ever saw -- at Nimbus 2003, of all places -- was by angiej on postcolonialism and Harry Potter, and one of the things she said was that as a woman of color who grew up reading children's classics and fantasy/SF, she did not have any favorite characters who looked like her. That statement has stuck with me (obviously) -- and I think it goes a long way toward explaining why the bar's racial makeup is how it is.