Our Race and New Media conference last Saturday was a great success—putting it mildly. Positive reviews are raining in from all directions, from participants to audience members, and there are a few journalists in the process of writing rave reviews. We’ll also have the audio online soon for podcast, as well as pictures.

Thanks to all who were involved for making it work so well, from the two of us who organized the event, Annie Seaton and Aaron Barlow, professors of English at New York City College of Technology, the host of the conference. Estimates are that close to 200 people participated in the conference at one time or another.

The conference kicked off with a talk by Dr. Reginald Blake, professor of Physics at New York City College of Technology, also a Visiting Research Scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory and director of City Tech's Black Male Initiative (BMI). Dr. Blake cautioned us to remember that new and old media are inextricably intertwined, setting a framework for what proved to be a day of intense and instructive conversation. In fact, Dr. Blake’s kickoff talk was far more than just the expected introduction—it was a very smart and thoughtful foray that left with the following questions: how does “new media” deal with the catalog of American racial stereotypes (mammy, sapphire, sambo, etc.). Does “new media” alter perceptions of race, or reinforce them? Dr. Blake reminded us that, after all, this is just a tool—and therefore, neither intrinsically helpful nor harmful—but as we think of Barack Obama as the first “new media” candidate, it’s difficult not to feel helpful. And yet, Dr. Blake brought us back to some basics: is there, he wondered, via new media-- a time on the horizon where notions of race and racism will alter significantly? Dr. Blake was skeptical—feeling that “new media” had, perhaps, not done enough to prove itself to be different, but he was also hopeful about the goals of both the conference and the larger intersection between race and new media.

In high school, I read with interest Joan Baez's autobiographical musings Daybreak. At the time, 1968, I was quite involved with questions of non-violence and pacifism, and was constantly challenged by “what would you do if” questions that tried to force me to admit a hypothetical limit to my unwillingness to use violence. Baez, not surprisingly, had faced similar types of grilling. Unlike me, however, she didn't fall into the trap, sidestepping the questions by showing the absurdity by turning the questions themselves into a series of laughable impossibilities.

Her point was that one cannot set up principles as absolutes, that one cannot claim that he or she will act unequivocally in one fashion or another, regardless of the details of the situation. Principles provide guidelines for the future and a means for analyzing and even judging the past. No matter how much we want them to, they do not restrict one from particular actions in the moment. They cannot, for each situation differs from every other, as universals do not.

Prague, August 6 or 7, 1968 (two weeks before the Russian tanks rolled in). Three o’clock or so, and I was in the gigantic central train station. The little tour with my erstwhile traveling companion was over (we’d finally found an official willing to extend our expired visas—mine to midnight only) and I needed a ticket, nothing more, to West Germany. Or, at least, close to West Germany. No trains, I knew, crossed that border. And no one at a ticket window seemed to speak any language I remotely found familiar. “Allemande?” Shaken heads. “Deutschland?” Same thing. Finally, someone sold me a ticket to somewhere, a track number and a train number on it.

My reaction, on reading Barack Obama’s Philadelphia speech yesterday, was that he has offered us and our presidential candidates the chance to raise the level of debate in America to a level not reached for more than thirty years. This morning, The New York Times, in an editorial, agrees: “

We can’t know how effective Mr. Obama’s words will be with those who will not draw the distinctions between faith and politics that he drew, or who will reject his frank talk about race. What is evident, though, is that he not only cleared the air over a particular controversy — he raised the discussion to a higher plane.

Sometimes, when I think I’m getting too cynical, something happens to both give me a laugh and affirm that a healthy dose of skepticism is an important part life on the Web. One of those “somethings” began last Sunday.

I received an email from someone at polimedia.us that started with this:

Does a delegate go to a political convention to lead? To represent? To decide?

I had always thought their task was to represent and, based on that, to decide. After all, the very word “delegate” itself implies a transfer of power, a representation—and not duties of leadership. In today's New York Times, however, Geraldine Ferraro tells me that I'm wrong.

One of the legacies of colonial rule in Africa is the modern nation-state. Before the European colonists imposed their preconceptions on Africa, there were no “countries,” as we in the West know them. Instead, there were areas of influence and prerogative, borders being gray areas of negotiation and understanding often without specific geographic delineation. With fairly light population, there was room for everyone.

In Mervyn Leroy's 1931 film Little Caesar, Edward G. Robinson plays a crook named Caesar, nicknamed Rico. Belligerent and ambitious, Rico claws his way to the top, but his best friend betrays him and the media turn on him. He dies, shot down when he has nothing left, uttering one of the most famous lines of early sound cinema.

Rico Giuliani has yet to utter any Famous Last Words, but he will. Maybe later today. Still, he always was a “little” Caesar, a mean-spirited, vindictive man loyal only to his inner circle—much like Robinson's character in the movie.

Wasn't it Tolstoy who believed that “leaders” simply follow from in front?

For the second time, we have a victory in a Democratic primary where a candidate won by a margin well beyond what the polls predicted.

Why?

Today, on the television gobble-fests, we'll be given reason after reason why. In every case—mark my words—the focus will be on the leaders, on what they have done or haven't done. On strategy, on manipulating the voters one way or another.

Yet the real story of South Carolina isn't the candidates at all.

It's the voters.

Once more, the American commercial news media have created a story and then reported it as “news.”

How long, just how long can this go on?

Polls, the day before the New Hampshire primary, show Hillary Clinton suddenly dropping far behind Barack Obama. Clinton has an emotional moment before the primary. She wins the primary. Suddenly, we have a story, a narrative the news media can get their teeth into. Rather than simply reporting the news, they can create it.