Why would it take a presidential debate directed by African Americans and focused on issues of particular concern to African Americans to ask the questions that everyone should be asking of the presidential candidates?

Well, it’s because race still matters in America. It’s the single greatest factor dividing America, and as a result, it’s the best site from which we see how inequality — in all racial, sexual and economic forms — is defining America.

In that context, we shouldn’t be surprised that the first “All-American Presidential Forum” last Thursday on PBS, moderated by Tavis Smiley and centered around the 10 issues expressed in The Covenant with Black America, was so successful — so revealing and meaningful.

Bill Richardson, in response a question about poverty and education, said it was the first time in the multiple debates they have had that any of the candidates had been asked formally about educational issues.

Smiley told Maryland professor Sherrilyn Ifill, “Tonight, we asked 9 questions — this was the first time I’ve heard the candidates asked about Darfur and about Katrina. That was the point of tonight.” Check out Ifill’s live debate analysis at blackprof.com (a not-to-be-missed site, by the way, for accessible but informed cultural and political analysis).

We also shouldn’t be surprised, though, that many of us didn’t even know the debate was happening. Some PBS stations showed other programming — and the mainstream media almost completely ignored it (although, it should be noted, everyone can still catch the PBS webcast).

We just don’t like to talk about issues that force us to face the uncomfortable realities of America — especially when they deal with race.

A remarkable study published in the academic journal Du Bois Review earlier this month reveals how white America would like to believe race isn’t significant.

When asked how much they would have to be paid to live the rest of their lives as a black person, “most requested relatively low amounts, generally less than $10,000.” That’s opposed to the $1 million most of them would need to be paid to give up television:

The results suggest most white Americans don’t truly comprehend the persisting racial disparities in our country, said Philip Mazzocco, co-author of the study and assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State University’s Mansfield campus.

“The costs of being black in our society are very well documented,” Mazzocco said. “Blacks have significantly lower income and wealth, higher levels of poverty, and even shorter life spans, among many other disparities, compared to whites.”

For example, white households average about $150,000 more wealth than the typical black family. Overall, total wealth for white families is about five times greater than that of black families, a gap that has persisted for years.

Mazzocco believes that this attitude toward the black experience in America is as much a product of ignorance as it is racism.

But ignorance doesn’t explain — to cite a recent example — why, in light of the Don Imus affair, critics and pundits had a double standard toward sexism in hip hop. While not apologizing for that sexism, Edward Rhymes, author of “When Racism Is Law & Prejudice Is Policy: Prejudicial & Discriminatory Laws, Policies and Decisions in U.S. History,” notes that misogyny has been pervasive in rock music, in gangster films like “The Godfather,” and other “white” genres — but the mainstream media has never expressed the same outrage:

It is not sexism and misogyny that the dominant culture is opposed to (history and commercialism has proven that). The dominant culture’s opposition lies with hip-hop’s cultural variation of the made-in-the-USA misogynistic themes and with the Black voices communicating the message.

In this sense, part of the reason why many Americans don’t like to address the issues discussed in the recent presidential debate is that it might force them to interrogate the source of their own prejudices — their own entrenched attitudes toward African Americans and toward the poor.

Thanks to columnists like Mary Mitchell of the Chicago Sun Times for reminding us of how those attitudes affect the way we, and the media at large, see the world. Mitchell wrote a much-needed analysis how race affected the reporting of two recent “scandals” — the murder of a pregnant Jessie Marie Davis and the murder of Kimberly Vaughn and her children. The race of the victims and suspects, to put it simply, had as much to do the way they were portrayed in the media as the facts.

Mitchell expanded on her point in a later column that responded to a colleague at the Sun Times accusing her of racism.

Finally, we can’t ignore how these disturbing attitudes have real political consequences. The recent Supreme Court decision that outlaws attempts to integrate public schools and that goes a long way toward overturning Brown vs. Board of Education is a product of the refusal to take race seriously. Stan Simpson of the Hartford Courant made this point rather eloquently:

No school — or business or municipality, for that matter — can pretend that it wants to achieve diverse ranks without making race and ethnicity a prominent consideration. It’s like saying you want to add more fiber to your diet, then ignoring bran muffins.