As if they knew I’d be talking about the vacuum of leadership in the black community, the NAACP appointed Roslyn M. Brock, to succeed Julian Bond as the civil right’s group’s board chair and work alongside CEO Benjamin Jealous. Brock, 44, and Jealous, 37, seem ideally suited to inject youth and vigor into the aging organization, and I’m happy to pray for and support that progression. More than new faces, however, the NAACP needs a new voice. It needs a serious image makeover, and it needs to clear its throat and start speaking again. We live in a world of high-speed, instant communication with a 24-hour news cycle, but how often do we hear anything, anything at all, from the NAACP other than its anniversaries and rearranging of executive deck chairs? And, while the NAACP’s mission remains focused on civil rights, they seem to turn both a blind eye and deaf ear to the cancer of ignorance and moral ambiguity destroying the black family and, as I write about this week, silencing the black voice.

The group awarded its 2009 Image Award to the increasingly raunchy Beyoncé for Outstanding Female Artist and to the foul-mouthed and salacious Jamie Foxx for Outstanding Male Artist, which suggests the NAACP, much like the black church itself, has bought in to the benign see-no-evil posture of not only tolerating youth-targeted media of questionable moral character but demonstrably awarding it. Which, I suppose, is fine. The NAACP does not present itself as an arbiter of morality so much as an avenue of social justice. And, though I realize I probably sound like a maniac or a prude to many people reading this, my ire at Ms. Knowles , Mr. Foxx and the rest is not so much about censoring their art form as it is about building a firewall between adult entertainment and children. Beyoncé's top constituency is not 30-year old women but 13-year old girls, to whom the singer is teaching lessons of sexual commodity. My frustration with the NAACP, the black church, and, I guess, everybody (since I seem to be the only one peeved about this) is there is not only no leadership in black America, there is, sadly, no accountability in black America. Ms. Knowles, husband Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, Scrappy-Doo and the rest all know, good and well, they are selling sin to children. For, if they truly restricted purchases of adult material to, well, adults, their record sales would plummet. These people are no better than cigarette companies trying to get impressionable kids hooked, or drug dealers using them as mules. Beyoncé is hardly the antichrist, but she is increasingly crossing lines that demand a discussion of whether or not this is a positive person or a person of reasonable moral character. I honestly don't care if Beyoncé shakes her cakes, don't care about Lil Wayne's childish, insipid gynecological raps. But if these persons aren't serious about keeping the adult stuff away from ten and twelve year-olds, then, by any reasonable moral standard, they are corrupting children for money. And the NAACP hands these people a statue. An image award. Way to go.

For me, and I'd suppose many others, to take the NAACP seriously, they've got to stop sucking up to people who make money off of corrupting the values of our children. For the NAACP to actually mean something to me today, in 2010, they need to speak to me, rather than huddle in conclaves—or wherever it is that they huddle. The NAACP needs to reintroduce itself to America—white and black, and present a case for its relevance. For why it should continue to exist and why we should support it. I believe both suppositions are true: they should exist, we should support them. But that is not a case for this ministry to make, it is a case for them to make. To make plain and obvious who and what the NAACP is. They need an image makeover. As our president has done, the NAACP needs to aggressively embrace new media, put a face on their mission and make themselves relevant and important to this generation of African Americans.

“The Tea Party used marching effectively," Brock said, referring to the current political movement that advocates limited government. "It's long been a tool in our arsenal.” I sincerely hope Ms. Brock has more insight into the very dangerous Tea Party phenom than that. Given the benefit of the doubt—that the orphaned quote is more a product of amateurish reporting than what it sounds like: a Palin-esque dilettante remark suggestive of an alarming lack of depth. I assume Ms. Brock is certainly not Mrs. Palin, but if that was the best quote The Grio's reporter could glean all evening, I'm not terribly hopeful.

I’m not all that interested in marching. Marching, boycotts, sit-ins and such are all familiar tools of the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. What we need now is new ideas. New voices. Things no one has done before or tried before. The NAACP needs to make itself relevant again. Most people I know, white and black, assume the NAACP goes about its business quietly doing… whatever it does. The group needs to embrace new technologies like YouTube and do monthly if not weekly video broadcasts, letting us know what the NAACP has been up to, what our local chapters are doing. I, frankly, have no idea whatsoever what my local NAACP chapter does other than raise money for itself.

Brock spoke of the NAACP's future strategies, which she calls "PGA: policy, governance and accountability."

"I'd like for it to be more strategic in its focus," she said. "Historically the NAACP rallies and tells us what its against. I'd like for it to be more proactive and strategic. During our policy making sessions...we pass myriad resolutions year after year. I really want to assess that process."

Blink. What does that mean? Who is she talking to? Our children are being lost every day. Our families are falling apart. Our unemployment rate hovers around 15% on average. We are the first fired and last hired. We don't need someone to assess policy-making processes. We need someone to speak in plain English about real boots-on-the-ground solutions to real problems. This sounds like a drawn-out process leading to more huddling in conclaves and more documents being drawn up to resolve to do something... someday... eventually... maybe...

What is it you people actually do?

The NAACP, locally and nationally, needs to pick a fight. A big one. Needs to get in the news. Needs to engage the imagination and, more important, the trust of young people who view the institution as an anachronism.

The announcement of Ms. Brock was, perhaps, the singular opportunity for the NAACP to make national news, an opportunity apparently wasted as either the media didn't report anything substantive Ms. Brock may have said or, worse, that she didn't say anything more substantive than the corporate double-speak about evaluating and myriad resolutions. Which suggests either the NAACP has the world's worst media advance team, or that Ms. Brock may not have any new ideas about anything. For, if she did, now would have been the time to share them with us. There should have been no fewer than five prepackaged sound bites about who she is and why she matters, about what will be different about the NAACP and, most critically, about why black America should unite behind them.

Either Chairperson Brock failed to craft an effective media moment or she has no new ideas beyond rearranging the chairs in the corporate boardrooms where our member dues are spent on coffee and donuts.

Black America has fallen into a malaise of navel-staring, most of us having settled for whatever apportion of the American dream we’ve managed to grab hold to. The NAACP once represented a vision of not only what black America could be but what it should be. An Obama-style vertically-integrated media campaign would go a long way toward engaging the public interest again.

I certainly congratulate Ms. Brock. But I’ll get excited about this change of leadership when and if I ever figure out what the NAACP does and if whatever that is is worth my time and interest. Which is a terribly sad thing to say about so great an institution.