THE MEDIA-DRIVEN hoopla over who's the baddest black man in America is the wrong issue to emerge from the Million Man March. More critical is this: Now that Louis Farrakhan has our attention, what are we as a nation going to do about racism and its power over us?

President Clinton took a major step in a passionate call for racial healing just hours before Farrakhan took the stage in Washington. "America, we must clean our house of racism," he said. Yet some Republican leaders sought political capital by skirting the issue and heaping scorn on Clinton for not being tough enough in his denunciation of Farrakhan.

By their absence from the Washington rally, black men and women said they would choose for themselves whom to follow, thank you very much. And by their presence, men and a considerable number of women said the same thing.

"Our house is on fire and my children are in the house and I've come to put out the fire," said Joseph Lowery, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, "and I don't care who else is bringing the water. I join with them to put the fire out in the black community."

Those who really care about race relations and rebuilding American cities must acknowledge that the Million Man March was not just a pep rally for black men. It was a wakeup call and a symposium at the same time.

Probably hearing a Louis Farrakhan speech for the first time, millions of people watching on television could judge for themselves the messenger, the message and the audience.

Except for the fact that he did not castigate black Christians; black sororities and fraternities; the NAACP, or the National Urban League and he did not single out Jews it was a pretty typical Farrakhan jeremiad. Long-winded. Rambling. Entertaining. Spellbinding. Ridiculous. Humorous one minute, full of fury the next. Compassionate. Excoriating. Conciliatory. Messianic.

I'd heard it before, so what he said was less riveting than what the hundreds of thousands of black men said by their presence and their pledges.

"Brother, my brother," said Kurt Schmoke, Baltimore's mayor, "let's get busy. Today we ask nothing of the government. Today we ask everything of ourselves."

"Stand up, black man!" Al Sharpton exhorted.

Measuring a message

How do we gauge whether the well-staged pledge taking, hugging and exchanges of "I love you, my brother," actually transform black men and, by extension, the nation?

Let's watch the police blotters and the court calendars. If the men are true to their word, then domestic violence, child neglect, juvenile delinquency and drug and homicide cases should drop precipitously.

And, if they are true to their word, they should register to vote by the millions. Farrakhan, a nonvoter who preached against voting until a decade ago, now joins with Jesse Jackson and others in vowing to register some 8 million blacks.

If they are true to their word, the next PTA meeting you attend should be filled with black parents; houses of worship should be teeming this weekend; membership in the NAACP and the Urban League should surge, and some 25,000 black orphans soon should find permanent homes.

That's how to measure the meaning of the Million Man March, not by polls and polemics on who's the No. 1 black man in America.