Arrow's 'Black Driver'

The CW's show Arrow, based off of the DC Comics character Green Arrow, is quite an interesting show. Oliver Queen, also known as the Arrow, joins with a couple other people to create a team to fight crime in Starling City. The two other people on this team are Felicity Smoak, who works in the IT department of Queen Consolidated, and John Diggle, whom Oliver's mother hires as his bodyguard. By the second season, they realize that they need to be working closer together during the day to prevent suspicion when they are seen meeting together about what they do at night, so Felicity becomes Oliver's secretary, and Diggle continues in his role as Oliver's "black driver".

That last part was actually a direct quote from an episode in Season Two:

Felicity: (speaking to Oliver) "I worked very hard to get where I am, and it wasn't so I can fetch you coffee."
Diggle: "Well, it could be worse. My secret identity is 'his black driver'." [From episode 2.02]

The show seems like it is laughing at itself here. The writers know race can potentially be a touchy subject, so they made the one scene where it is focused on at all quite humorous - kind of a joke between Oliver and his friends. Arrow takes the stereotypical "black person working for a white person" and makes fun of it, as the entire situation is a cover for their partnership in Team Arrow.

In a more general sense, the show also breaks the stereotype of the dependent black person because Diggle is pretty much depicted as Oliver's equal - just without the fancy moves, costume, and arrows. Most of the time, the topic of race is not mentioned at all, preferring to focus more on team dynamics and other outside relations than on these petty differences.

Watch the scene specified above here: