THIS statistic in a magazine article recently caught my eye: Eighty-nine percent of journalists belong to the middle or upper-middle class. And because the media are so isolated from poor and working-class Americans, the article argued, they find it difficult to report on or to articulate class issues.

This argument struck me as particularly relevant in light of the media's handling last month of Bill Cosby's frontal assault on "lower income" African Americans for "not holding up their end" in the push for black progress.

Although the comedian specifically referred to class in his blistering commentary, the media translated his remarks into a manifesto on personal responsibility alone. That was surely one point Cosby was making but, in fixating solely on that, journalists actually diverted attention from the most salient truth that Cosby had exposed: the festering wound of class division in black America

With few exceptions, sequels are never as good as the original version. That's true in movies, books and as Al Sharpton showed us, in politics. When he ran for president none of the political commentators across the country called him a serious contender. Many people thought that what Sharpton was really trying to do was to be the second coming of Jesse Jackson and that this was his bid to the most powerful civil rights figure in America. It didn't work out that way and now the Sharpton campaign is officially finished and is saddled with a $600,000 debt.

When Jesse Jackson ran for president in 1988, he won nine states and had over 1200 delegates. The "Rev.," as his staffers affectionately call him won no states at all and garnered a measly 26 delegates. In 1988, there was no way the Democrats could ignore Jesse Jackson and there was no way they could refuse him an opportunity to speak at their convention. Jackson's speech is still considered to be one of the greatest ever given at a political convention.

Al Sharpton will be lucky if he gets a free ticket to the convention and a paid hotel room so he can watch the event from the stands. He had his amusing moments but the Sharpton campaign never managed to ignite the public's imagination. If you went anywhere in the black community in the last few months it seemed as if no one was talking about Sharpton White House run other than to make a caustic joke. He was expected to do well in the South, the often quirky Washington DC primary and of course in his own backyard, New York but he failed in all three places. He cast out his nets and black voters threw them right back at him.

Maybe it was because many to people who lived through the 80s and 90s the name Reverend Al Sharpton still brings up memories of the whole Crown Heights ugliness, the Tawana Brawley incident and the eight innocent people who died in the Freddy's Fashion Mart fire. Others still can't get the image of those horrible jogging suits he used to wear or his old Samson-meets-James Brown pompadour hairstyle out of their minds. At best they saw him as that guy who's a big deal in New York City but that was all. Al Sharpton said his campaign was about "identity," and that he wanted " to slap the donkey" (the Democrats) and that he wasn't running for "king of the ghetto" and on his web site it states that he was running to keep the "dream alive," but never said much in the way of concrete details. His political platform was extremely vague and it seemed that the whole thing was nothing more than an ego trip. In an interview with The New York Daily News he indicated that he's satisfied with how things worked out with the presidential bid because he' s more nationally known now and is planning to host a syndicated radio and TV talk show.

Well, that's just great for Al and in a way-but not the way he would probably appreciate--it's great for the black community as well. Times have changed, as have the needs of Black America. The pitiful showing of Al Sharpton in the presidential race should put all our so-called and mostly self-appointed black leaders on notice: Ladies and gentlemen we demand more of you than a few dramatic speeches in church pulpit and we aren't voting for you just because you are black. Although some of us still need to work on breaking our mental shackles, physical slavery is dead and so is Jim Crow. We don't need an imitation Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or a very poor man's Jesse Jackson to negotiate with whites on our behalf. The "Rev." might not agree, but that's something we can all celebrate.Kimberley Jane Wilson

WHEN the Rev. Al Sharpton launched his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination last year, no one thought he could actually win. But there were those who expected him to reconstitute the posse the Rev. Jesse Jackson left behind after his 1988 bid for the nomination, and use it to gain influence in the party.

In '88, Jackson turned in a spectacular performance, winning nearly 7 million votes and 30 percent of the delegates to the Democratic Party's convention. With stats like those, he was able to leverage himself into a position of power within the party and give African Americans an unprecedented voice in the organization, setting the stage for black voters' role as the kingfish of Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign.

Sharpton may well have thought he could replicate those results to become the new leader of black America. After all, he reigns over a nonprofit organization -- the National Action Network -- with 22 chapters across the country that could serve as bases for organizing. He has a record as a formidable strategist from his work in New York politics, and he made substantive inroads into the Hispanic community when he involved himself in the fight against the U.S. Navy's practice bombing on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques.

But a Jacksonesque showing has eluded Sharpton. When he arrives at the Democratic National Convention this summer, it is not likely to be as any newly crowned prince of blackness, but merely as a highly entertaining pol who barely made it to the finish line. What's more, his campaign may become the definitive historical marker for the end of "black politics."

WHAT is the state of the "black family" in America? Not good! Not good at all! And that's the conclusion one would have to come to after watching a flawed nationally televised symposium focusing on the "State of the Black Family."

According to panelists speaking at the symposium: Black people have the lowest rate of marriage of any group in America, and the highest rate of divorce (66 percent) of any group in America. Over sixty percent of black children are being brought up without the help of a father. They have the smallest network of friends of any group in America, and therefore, are among the loneliest group of people in America. They have the smallest number of people to turn to in times of need. Over fifty percent of the two million people in prison are black men; there are more young black men in prison than in college. Blacks earn $ 688 billion annually, but only spend four percent of their money with each other. Money earned by blacks circulates only one time in the black community. While blacks constitute 12 percent of the population in the United States, black females account for 64 percent of all the AIDS cases in the U.S. One out of two black people will die of heart disease. One out of three black people will die of cancer. One out of six black people will die of diabetes. Four of every 10 black women suffer from fibroid tumors.

These alarming findings, along with other disturbing statistics (i.e. black families earn 56 percent of the median income of white families and 54 percent of black high school seniors have "below basic" reading skills) indicate that the black family is in a state of crisis.