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The most stunning indictment of the media's portrayal of black America came when someone pointed out the bias in reporting during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The Associated Press published two photos. One showed a group of white people, wading through the water and pushing some items that they'd taken from a store. The other photo showed a group of black people, wading through the water and pushing some items that they'd taken from a store. The white people were described as "finding food". The black people were described as "looting".

To me, the second most stunning indictment of the media's portrayal of black America came when "The "Cosby Show" reached it's peak of popularity. The news media loudly protested that there couldn't possibly be that many black families with two professionals at their head. The media refused to notice that there were plenty of black graduates from law, medical, and other professional schools long before the 70's.

But "The Media" was relentless in its collective inability to reconcile the truth with prejudice, and was instrumental in causing the show to be killed while it was still popular.

Now, black people are being represented as presidents, FBI agents, judges and doctors...in guest appearances on the fictional television shows that are not about our future in space travel. More often than not, our Julliard-trained actors still get the bulk of the junkie and criminal thug roles.

When "Battlestar Galactica" left Earth, did they leave the black people behind? The Canadian casting agencies couldn't find any people of color to populate a couple of those fantastic worlds beyond the Stargate in "Stargate SG-1"?

Is the BRAVO network ever going to let a black person win a competition? Home and Garden Television has. Food Network has. Both black winners have been stellar and deserved to win. The contests were close, and had they lost, I would still be proud of them.

Some of the judging justifications and the last minute "mistakes" on BRAVO are so contrived that a nine year old can see through them. One judge went so far as to bloviate about there being no truffles in Italy in order to justify his ranting at a black cooking show contestant for using truffles in his dish. Black contestants who soar through weeks of competition suddenly have complete melt-downs in the finals. We are portrayed as not being able to sustain hard work and quality effort. On BRAVO.

The mainstream news media cannot seem to find any black

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