I've attended and written about Tavis's events before. As always, I hope for the best, and this was no exception. This time, I imagined that we might come away with something more constructive, comprehensive and decisive as to which candidate would be the best one to lead America. I hoped we might see a discussion particularly sensitive to the issues of Black America, one that would not take our vote for granted. In other words, I wanted - we wanted - these Presidential candidates to actually hear our cry, our complaints and our concerns, and not buy us off with platitudes and canned rhetoric to make us feel good.
"The Tavis Smiley presidential forum was fairer than CNN's."
First the good news:
The Tavis Smiley presidential forum was fairer than CNN's. CNN grouped its favored candidates Clinton, Obama and Edwards together at center stage, and managed to give them not just all the best camera angles but most of the question time, too. By contrast, Tavis promised to assign candidate positions randomly, and to give everyone the same amount of time.
The Smiley forum did feature questions from three journalists of color (DeWayne Wickham, Michel Martin, and Ruben Navarette, Jr.), who presumably played some role, along with Tavis, in selecting the questions. Tavis also allowed members of the public to submit proposed questions in advance over the internet.
Smiley's studio audience was mainly black, and a black man, Tavis himself, got to sit in the moderator's chair. The affair was held at historically black Howard University.
There were questions you'd never hear in front of white audiences on such topics as the racial selectivity of the nation's criminal justice system, and the black AIDS rate. There was even a question on the right to return for those dispersed by Katrina.
All the candidates seemed to agree that mandatory minimum sentences were part of the problem, not part of the solution.
