The Reverend Al Sharpton wasn’t the only one who found fault with President Bush for addressing the NAACP convention. Many conservative bloggers felt he was wasting his time.

“One could see the hate directed toward him when he was speaking,” one poster wrote. “Didn’t he know it would never be enough? They are filled with hate, they have been raised that way and they have raised their children to hate whites. It is too late for this particular generation of Blacks to quit the blame game.”

That poster is in grave error if he thinks the NAACP represents the entire black community, but who can blame him for having that impression? That organization seems to be the only civil rights group that gets any significant press.

Here in New York City, the Congress of Racial Equality has been addressing the real concerns of the needy, yet their press releases seldom receive the attention they deserve. Therefore, I’ll share the one I received on Friday announcing that its annual Health Fair will be held Saturday, August 5, between 45th and 57th streets on Seventh Avenue.

The fair will provide important information on the problems that plague the black and Hispanic community, such as cardiovascular and infectious diseases and obesity. The fair also will help with the navigation of senior citizen prescription plans. It was CORE that sponsored the high-tech cardiac screenings at Cabrini Hospital that can diagnose latent heart disease and congenital abnormalities, which are the cause of sudden death in young African Americans.

The NAACP is a predominantly political organization that supports the same liberal agenda as most mainstream publications. Conservative, nonpartisan civil rights groups tend to struggle to get the public’s attention. That poster may not be aware that many people in the black community have conservative values that are completely opposite from that of the Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons, who monopolize the spotlight. I am willing to bet the blogger never heard of Ben Carson.

Well, neither had I — until last April, when my daughter escorted one of the students from Immaculate Conception, an inner-city elementary school in Staten Island, to Maryland to receive the Ben Carson Scholarship. Seventh-grader Fatima Baro was the only student to represent New York. Her academic achievements, community service, and essay focusing on the local effects of the September 11, 2001, attacks won her the $1,000 award, to be invested for her future college expenses.

My daughter was very impressed by the man behind the scholarship fund, and when I read his life story, I thought, “Why isn’t Hollywood making a movie about his life, instead of the lowlifes in feature films like ‘Hustle and Flow?'”

Mr. Carson was the product of a broken home, raised by a single mother with only a third-grade education who worked three jobs to support him and his brother. He was at the bottom of his fifth-grade class and called “dummy” by his classmates. His mother turned his life around when she restricted his television viewing and made him read two library books a week and demanded written reports on what he had read. In a very short time, his hunger for knowledge grew at a voracious rate and his grades soared.

He graduated from Yale, received his medical degree from the University of Michigan, and at 32 became the director of pediatric neurology at John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. In 1987, he made medical history when his team of surgeons successfully separated Siamese twins joined at the head. He established the Ben Carson Scholarship Fund to reward students in grades four through 11 who strive for academic excellence (GPA 3.75 or higher) and demonstrate a commitment to their community.

While Ben Carson’s biography is a stellar example of achievements attained despite social disadvantages, his story is just one of many that deserve more attention than the arrests of black rappers, athletes, and supermodels that capture tabloid headlines.

Conservative blacks and Hispanics who reject the Democratic Party line are routinely ridiculed and maligned by members of the same minority. If we dare to reject multiculturalism, affirmative action, social welfare programs, and social engineering, we are said to be pawns of the vast white, right-wing conspiracy. That we have personally witnessed the folly of these programs and their negative effects on our communities, and that we have come to these conclusions without any other influence, isn’t considered a possibility by these critics.

Mr. Bush went to the convention because he wanted to express his support and concern for the black community in general. The fact that it was an NAACP event meant that his speech might actually be heard.