I remember looking up from my cornflakes one morning in the 80s' to see a big scary face staring at me across the table. It was 'the face of evil', a 'beast' the tabloids said. 
It was in fact the now infamous Winston Silcott, who the papers of the day branded as the architect behind Tottenham's Broadwater Farm riots and the murder of PC Keith Blakelock. 
Whilst on both counts they were wrong, some 20 years later little has changed with regards to how Black people and other minorities are portrayed. Whether you're a hero or villain, if you're Black, you're guaranteed a raw deal somewhere along a very short line.
I read the Daily Mail. I know what they say about us and it is seldom good. Like a lot of newspapers the currency of fear and fear of the Black man pays dividends.
Take for example the Sun's investigative reporter Anthony France. 
He looked a figure of Fleet Street finery wielding a fake bomb in the bogs of the Houses of Parliament. Guy Fawkes eat your heart out, a scary Black man did what you could never do, got paid for it and walked away! And how wonderful of the Sun's editors to cast a Black man in a leading role - although first he had to double-up as canteen staff. His bosses then used the most hideous of pictures of him on the front page, which was enough to scare me. I bet his mother is proud.
Now think about this. A teacher on her second day at school is raped. An unknown, unnamed 15 year-old youth is arrested and charged. Now is it fairness or fear that prompted the Daily Mail to mention that: "The school draws pupils from a wide range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds including a large number of African and Caribbean students."
Except for the fact that the law prevents the naming of the ‘youth’ what is the point of mentioning that? Why throw it in other than to scare the living daylights out of middle-England, which may as well be on Tolkien's Middle-Earth because Black people obviously are not welcome there are to be the likely perpetrators to heinous crimes such as this.
Couldn’t the Sun have selected another reporter? After all a white face in the canteen of the Palace of Westminster is not an uncommon sight – although an English speaking one serving is probably unheard of.
I once did a stint on a daily pink coloured broadsheet and had forgotten my building pass on my desk in editorial. “Don’t worry buzz I’ll you through,” said the receptionist whose sidekick had recognised me having seen me every afternoon leading to that Thursday. “You do know where the canteen is don’t you?” she added, as it was unlikely that I’d be heading for anywhere else.
No one is suggesting that white Britain has to like us but vilifying and pigeonholing us at every given opportunity just compounds the problems of living well together.
It doesn't take a genius to work that out, or to understand that making a bid deal of race-related surveys (another source of fear) will also have people reaching for their shotguns, torches and rope. A most recent suggests that three London boroughs are predominately ethnic which in tabloid reader speak means that ‘they’re driving us out!’
My question is, how do you get the media to treat Black people fairly and provide balanced coverage of issues involving and relating to them? Can it be done?
Well, in the opinion of this tough talking columnist the answers are; ‘it’s impossible’ and ‘no’. Maybe the hideously white media establishments do need more colour, and not just in the canteens or wielding a mop and bucket.
Until things change don’t expect much as regards Black portrayal in the white media.