CNN

It's funny that we're all over TV now. Suddenly it's important to know what it's like to be "Black in America". I don't actually have anything particularly deep to say about this phenomenon as there is little to say beyond a sort of cliched statement about how it's messed up that we're only important when there's a Black Democratic nominee. I know that this is just Standard Operating Procedure for the media: deal with issues when they're hot. Race is hot cuz Barack is hot. The Media is, first and foremost, a business and I'm not going to fault them for being inadvertantly racially insensitive while pursuing the almighty dollar. What does concern me is how we use this opportunity. As previously stated, Jesse and Al are more or less dead in terms of power or relevance, so how can we use this exposure to address a couple of issues? Lord knows we have let some opportunities pass us by before. We let Katrina demolish the 3rd Ward and turn Black N.O. residents into refugees while FEMA took its sweet time getting water into the superdome and we didn't make more than a squeak. We let the country ignore our dire circumstances (again) because those affected were poor and Black. When Kanye West has the most notable statement on the issue from the standpoint of the Black Community, (though I do appreciate his enthusiasm) something is wrong. We can't let this opportunity go by but how do we harness it? I would argue that this might be the time for other (as in not Obama) Black politicians to offer up a set of new policies or initiatives in as public a way as possible. If they're smart, they'll use the figures and other representations of Black problems on TV as the focuses for their initiatives in order to try to make some headway on those issues. If I just haven't been paying attention and Black politicians have been doing so under my nose, then I humbly apologize and I'm glad to hear I was wrong (trust me, my ego can handle it). But if the situation is as I suspect, its time to get in gear y'all. Time waits for no man (or woman) and CP time will not cut it here.