Forty years after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s murder, America’s media still deems African-Americans, Latinos and other people of color unqualified to express views on the nation’s most riveting issue---the Iraq War. CNN’s wall-to-wall coverage of the lead-up to Bush’s Wednesday night speech had anchorperson Wolf Blitzer surrounded by several other pundits/reporters, all of whom were white. And those selected to give their insights were not generals or ex-military leaders, but political hacks like Paul Begala and Bay Buchanan, neither of whom have any basis for providing special insights on Iraq. The media refuses to acknowledge the war’s racial component, and representatives of the African-American and Latino communities whose members are dying for George Bush’s fantasies are deemed unfit to comment upon it.

I do not watch television news at home, but get more than my fill from the bank of televisions where I work out. CNN, MSNBC, various local and national news shows and even Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are on display, so I get a cross-section of who is being asked to comment on national and international events.

In the hour before Bush’s Wednesday night speech, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and his staff interviewed what was designed to represent a broad cross-section of opinion on the “surge” strategy. To my surprise, the leading alternative to the right-wing FOX News did not feel obligated to include even a token African-American, not even the Juan Williams-type moderate who can be trusted to parrot the mainstream line.

No, CNN’s reporters and interviewees were as white as major league baseball teams before Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers sixty years ago. In fact, the scene was right out of the South of the 1950’s: a whites-only setting where folks discuss decisions that disproportionately affect blacks, Latinos and people of color.

Oddly, CNN was careful to include an equal number of women, both among its staff and its interviewees. But given that women voters join Blacks and Latinos in forming the chief electoral base of the Democratic Party, CNN’s choice of arch-conservative Bay Buchanan as one of the women pundits raises even more questions about the network’s news judgment.

Bay Buchanan is the sister of Pat Buchanan. The Buchanan’s latest paper organization, American Cause, had more television time on CNN to discuss the war than any labor union or civil rights group.

Prior to the November 2006, the media justified its exclusion of racial minorities on the grounds that they were soliciting opinions of those in power, and whites controlled the Republican Congress. But African-American Congress members now hold key House committee chairs, and the racial composition of the interview pool has not changed.

Had CNN or another network solicited the viewpoint of a legitimate representative of the Black or Latino communities, the viewers might have heard someone question why Bush is proposing to spend $1 billion for a jobs program in Iraq rather than America.

We might have heard about the lack of education and employment options that lead young men and women of color to join the armed forces, raising questions about the “voluntariness” of their service in Iraq.

But the last thing CNN or other media want is to have the Iraq War viewed in racial terms. That’s why mainstream America told Martin Luther King, Jr to “shut up and sit down” when he began denouncing the Vietnam War.

One of the striking features of the Iraq fiasco has been how little of the debate focuses on the misallocation of resources. One virtually never hears a pundit discuss how America could have provided universal health care and ended homelessness and the nation’s affordable housing shortage for less than the cost of the war.

Forty-three years after King gave his “I have a Dream” speech, Blacks only get their opinions solicited when affirmative action or some racially charged incident is involved. Latinos are limited to discussing immigration issues.

Because the media does not see the Iraq War as particularly involving Blacks or Latinos—after all, they’re just the ones doing the fighting---only white and possibly Arab opinions need be elicited.

CNN did solicit the post-speech opinion of Barack Obama, but none of the white pundits were elected officials. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is sometimes trotted out to give a Latino perspective, but I have never seen he or any other Latino interviewed about Iraq and if his opinion was solicited last night I missed it.

Paul Begala, who denounced and called for the removal of Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean after the Party regained control of Congress, has no constituency base. Yet CNN solicited his opinion on Iraq while excluding representatives of Black and Latino organizations.

As Americans head to the ski slopes and shopping malls to “celebrate” Martin Luther King Day, let us keep in mind the continued exclusion of non-whites from most of the nation’s major policy debates. We should also keep this exclusion in mind when the Supreme Court abolishes the use of race in school assignments later this spring, a ruling that will be premised on America having become a color-blind society.

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