“No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” ~ Luke 16:13

I recently attended the Tea Party Patriots American Policy Summit in Phoenix, Arizona, mainly to promote my book and the book of a sponsor who graciously funded my trip. I spent most of my time in the “Author’s Corner” so I didn’t see all the speeches or sit in the breakout sessions.

I did, however, have the opportunity to meet a lot of everyday Americans from across the country who stopped to look at the books on my table and speak with me. Many of them had the same question, and it’s one I’m asked often when I’m at a Tea Party event, whether it’s as a speaker, exhibitor or participant.

“Why aren’t there more black people here?”

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For those of you who aren’t sports fans, there’s been a major flap over at ESPN, “the worldwide leader in sports,” regarding racially-charged comments made by one of their analysts. Let me set the stage for you.

ESPN has a widely acclaimed sports documentary series, “30 for 30,” in which they cover key events, teams and personalities in sports history. These documentaries transcend the usual discussions of X’s and O’s and wins and losses to address social and cultural impacts, with compelling human drama to draw the viewer into the story. They are uniformly excellent.

In that same tradition, their most recent standalone documentary, “The Fab Five,” recounts the exploits of five players recruited in 1991 to play for University of Michigan basketball team. They were widely regarded as the “greatest class ever recruited,” and they changed basketball, and brought controversy, by introducing the “hip-hop” culture to the court, a culture that’s de rigueur today.

Subsequently, their legacy was tarnished by a scandal in the wake of their departure involving a booster and laundering of gambling money through payments to players.

Neither their controversial style nor the scandal, however, was the catalyst for the provocative comments made by the ESPN analyst.

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As disappointed as I was in the outcome of the presidential election of 2008, I took some solace in at least one thing, and that was that the nation had turned a corner in its turbulent history on the topic of race.

I wrote about that night in my book, SELLOUT: Musings from Uncle Tom’s Porch, recalling how black journalist Juan Williams struggled to contain his emotions once the election was called for Barack Obama. I remember the scene in Grant Park in Chicago, where several thousand people gathered to celebrate Obama’s victory. Oprah Winfrey was there, tears flowing freely. I was most moved, however, to see Jesse Jackson weeping, his entire body heaving with sobs:

I knew these weren’t the normal tears of joy shed by the supporters of a victorious candidate, especially coming from Jackson. You could see in his face the release of decades of pain and struggle, and although I agree with almost nothing the man says or does, I was touched by his emotion.

Despite what he has become, he was there at Selma and marched to Montgomery, and he was in Memphis when Dr. King was gunned down, standing just feet below him in the parking lot. He probably never dreamed a black man would become president in his lifetime, and I’m sure that feeling was reinforced by his own two unsuccessful bids for the office.

President Obama struck a conciliatory tone that night, and while I knew there would be battles to come on issues of policy and the proper role of government, I believed those who said we had now entered into a “post-racial” era, and people who stirred up racial animosity for political gain or from a heart of evil were to be marginalized going forward.

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