| I would like to cite an example (albeit a rare one) of good writing creating "real" black people. Homicide: Life on the Street and Liberty Heights, both Barry Levinson productions rejected stereotypes. Homicide had a truly integrated cast, where the casting didn't seem forced by PC pressure. Gee, the squad commander was part black, part Italian, a topic which was constantly brought up. Meldrick, one of the detectives, felt his ethnicity strongly and often had to choose between, the common experience of being a police officer with his other detectives and the common experience of being black and protecting the people he had to arrest. But the best part of the show, and of Liberty Heights is that black characters weren't painted into a box. They were as complex and often as prejudiced as their white counterparts. They weren't just there to teach white America how to behave.
And that's just the black characters, I could go on with other ethnicities they treated uniquely, and I think fairly. | 
