Whenever the mainstream media wants to know what the African American community is thinking, they invariably go to the usual old, left-wing voices, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, as if they speak for all black people.

How much better would the debate about improving education, about dealing with high rates of unemployment and crime in black America if black America allowed itself the freedom of an honest, balanced approach to those issues that was open to conservative views?

Imagine the new vitality in the political discourse inside black America if serious weight was given to the ideas of people like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of Transportation William Coleman and professors Walter E. Williams and Thomas Sowell?

Instead, these brilliant people, apparently including RGIII, are dismissed as “Uncle Toms” or “cornball” brothers and sisters.