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The usual Who? Whom? applies when it comes to minority stereotypes and Hollywood depictions. South or East Asian American men can be depicted as dorky and effete with little fear of blowback, in contrast to depicting blacks or latinos as low-IQ high-crime net-tax consumers.
The introduction of a second axis can indeed be value-add here. That is, we can imagine a graph and map characters onto a horizontal dimension, with increasingly dumb as you move farther toward the left side and increasingly intelligent toward the right side. The vertical dimension would be increasingly "good guy" as you move farther toward the top, increasingly "bad guy" farther toward the bottom.
There would be far more black characters (as a percentage of black characters) on the right than white characters (as a percentage of white characters) relative to what one would expect based upon the average IQs of blacks and whites (perhaps even in the absolute sense), and far fewer on the left. There also would be far more black characters (as a percentage of black characters) on the top than white characters (as a percentage of white characters) relative to say, their crime statistics (especially violent crime statistics, or perhaps even in the absolute sense), and far fewer on the bottom.
The most disproportionate quadrant in terms of blacks being overrepresented relative to whites would be the top right quadrant: intelligent good guy. However, I posit the second most disproportionate quadrant would be bottom right, intelligent bad guy—and not top left, dumb good guy (which would be third). The most disproportionate quadrant in terms of blacks being underrepresented relative to whites would be the bottom left quadrant: dumb bad guy (like the aforementioned Neo-Nazis from Breaking Bad).
That is, the black/white disproportionality is greater along the intelligence dimension than the good guy/bad guy dimension when it comes to media portrayals.
This makes sense since a staple of American culture is prioritizing the status, feelings, and well-being of blacks over that of whites. And for most people, being viewed as stupid feels worse than being viewed as bad. Ask someone to think of an intelligent bad guy and they probably think of some cool edgy intimidating badass like Lalo Salamanca (if we're sticking with the BB/BCS universe). Ask someone to think of a dumb good guy and they probably think of some lame goofy doofus like the TravelWire employee who Lalo nonchalantly murders.
Much has been said by many about the glorification of violence and criminality in US black culture, where many blacks celebrate blacks behaving badly in a "das rite" manner. In contrast, while things such as trying hard in school may be mocked as "acting white," stupidity per se is not celebrated. If anything, the opposite: variations of "u stupid" as an insult between blacks can be readily found in online exchanges or fightporn, WorldStarHipHop, or publicfreakout-type videos (with little sense of irony or self-awareness).
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