by Charles
Plenty of blame has been placed at the feet of the Bush administration for its slow and bureaucratic responses to Hurricane Katrina, and rightly so. But what I don’t see is how the response was racist, and the comments alleging such by African American leaders, elected and otherwise, is both galling and dishonest. This is not to deny that racism still exists in the American south. I saw it personally, on numerous occasions in numerous homes over twenty years ago, and an ugly thing like racial bigotry takes a long time to go away. Generations. Yes, progress has been made, but there’s a long way to go.
The hurricane revealed quite a few things, one of them being that society can break down easily and quickly under the right (or wrong) circumstances. Another revelation was how quickly and reflexively race inciters got on the case and injected their vitriol into the situation. A few examples: