Black and white issues
Tim Rutten brings up an interesting point about the lack of coverage about the successes of African-Americans in all fields -- government, business, sports, entertainment. As part of an organization that encourages increased coverage of a minority group, I can definitely see the frustration in not seeing them covered.

However, I would argue that the media did a good job of hyping the fact that African-Americans won both Best Actor and Actress Oscars. Regarding Tiger Woods, I think those stories have been done to death, and even Eldrick himself likes to use the Cablinasian term instead of identifying with any one race. Of course, his canoodling with the latest blonde du jour doesn't help things. The Williams sisters have so dominated tennis for a couple of years now that the race thing hardly seems significant anymore.

Now with folks like Condolezza Rice, Colin Powell and Richard Parsons, it's harder to figure out why the coverage isn't there. Saying the achievements are "ordinary" seems wrong. It's just that those achievements are harder to sound important without sounding condescending yet still being relevant to African Americans. Unfortunately, for many African-Americans, the road to success (at least as projected in the mainstream) is via sports or entertainment. However, there are plenty of ways to success, especially in the government and big business.

And maybe one other reason these achievements don't get as much publicity is that it goes against the politics of many of the more well-known and vocal African-American leaders (read: Democrat). There was already that hubbub with Harry Belafonte and "Uncle Tom" Powell. And think about all the abuse Clarence Thomas gets. Big business leans conservative as well, despite the politics of the individuals. Sometimes people get accused of becoming "less black" when they hit the big time in business, politics, whatever. It's as if to be considered a "successful" African-American, you've got to sound or look like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson (in politics) or otherwise be a big sports/entertainment star. If you don't make noise or draw attention to yourself for your race, it can be overlooked. And that's a bad thing in so many ways.