You may have heard about the recent online Mountain Dew ad, the minute-long spot, which has been removed from Odd Future’s YouTube channel and Mountain Dew’s website, depicting a police officer goading a severely wounded white woman into picking out her attacker from a lineup of four black men and a goat. It was created by Tyler The Creator, a hip hop artist. Who's edgy.

We're not trying to pick on the Republican party here. Really, we're not. And surely we have readers who identify as Republicans. But this blog is about race and its intersection with aspects of American life, including culture, media and politics, and regarding politics, one thing is crystal clear: Republicans have a problem attracting non-whites to their party.

Last week, CNN ran a heavily-promoted show called "Black in America," promising that it would basically tell you everything you ever needed to know about what African-Americans face in the United States. The media reviews were fairly positive, but there's one blogger at a prominent liberal political web site, DailyKos, who thinks CNN missed an important point: