Where are all the normal black people?

What do Top Boy, Ill Manors and every other Adam Deacon film, all have in common? Send your answers on a post card...if you can’t wait that long I will tell you now, they all show the black community (moderately black men) in a negative light.  Asking the question where are all the normal black people? Because  For every gangster film you have about a white person (, The Layer Cake, ) You have a Billy Elliot,  A film about a young white boy from a working class family, pursuing his dream of being a dancer. Not every young black guy who lives in London, shots crack and goes around shooting anyone who so much as looks at him in a wrong way, or treads on his new Nike Air Max’s.

Black communities and men in these dramas are shown in such a pessimistic light living outside the norms of society, with their lifestyles and communities resembling the lawlessness of the Wild West. Now I am not saying these stories shouldn't be told, as stuff like this does happen my argument is not against trying to depict real life, my argument is when the depiction of real life gets blurred into being everyday life in the Black community. This is not everyday life this isn't everyone’s life in the Black Community which begs the question, ‘Where are all the normal black people?’ what about the stories about black people who stir clear of that way of life depicted in these dramas.

The stories like Anthony Joshua’s who won Heavyweight Boxing gold at the London 2012 Olympics or Nicola Adams the first woman to win a Boxing medal at the Olympics (and in style winning gold). There are these stories of positive success out there which can be put to drama and captivate the audience.  For instance Chuka Umunna (mixed race his mother is Irish/English his father Nigerian), the shadow business secretary who is being hotly tipped to be the Labour party’s first black leader. What about his story of reaching that point to be tipped like that? How about Helen Grant (English mother, Nigerian Father), who became the first black woman to represent the Conservatives at Westminster. What about stories like that?

In my own personal opinion it all stems from lazy film-making. The story of the street smart black kid hustling drugs has been utterly battered to death like the shit fish you get in your back end Fish and Chip shop. When writers/film-makers could get their fingers out of their arses and work for their coin and make dramas that portray resilience and extreme intelligence in the pursuit of high achievement by which can still entertain and inspire the young to be better.