Who Are The New Black Leaders? Why Don't Blacks Have A "Black Agenda"

A writer at the LA Times is writing about how Barack Obama finally showed up. On the centennial anniversary of the NAACP last month, the president took the microphone at the organization's convention in New York and, for the first time since his inauguration, spoke directly to black Americans. Noting that it was "good to be among friends," he went on to deliver a clear, sometimes informal and impassioned speech on the state of the race -- his race. He unselfconsciously used the terms "us" and "we." He charted the victories of the black past and described the present as much more paradoxical: Civil rights was the battle of the previous generation, he said, but persistent inequality is the fight of the present one. He even said that American society suffers from "structural inequality," a phrase loathed by conservatives and plenty of liberals too. The appreciative audience shouted amens and hooted with pride. It was in part because of the work of the NAACP, Obama acknowledged, that he was able to stand before the organization on its 100th birthday as the 44th president of the United States, an astonishing development. And yet, today, the fate of black folk is far from certain and is in some ways less secure than at any time in the last 100 years. Why? Blacks don't have an agenda. Let's talk politics from a African American point of view tonight on African American Political Pundit's "Political SlugFest" LIVE Tonight at 10:00 PM - "If you can handle the truth."