All it took was a non-political but highly visible artist

[msgadget]

Rap star Kanye West's seemingly radical off-script assertion two weeks ago during a Hurricane Katrina telethon that "George Bush doesn't care about black people" has become a full-blown topic of public policy debate.

A slew of recent polls have found that large majorities of blacks believe that the federal response to Hurricane Katrina would have been considerably speedier had those trapped in New Orleans been rich and white, and that the slow response was an indication of continuing racial inequity in this country. Large majorities of whites disagree.

Most of the press coverage of these poll results has concentrated on the vast racial divide they expose. But that's not necessarily the biggest story.

The latest Gallup cuts to the chase and asks: "Do you think George W. Bush does - or does not - care about black people?"

Among blacks, 21 percent say he does and 72 percent say he doesn't.

Among whites, 67 percent say he does and 26 percent say he doesn't.

Overall, 62 percent say he does and 31 percent say he doesn't.

Obviously, that's a pretty dramatic rift. But consider the absolute numbers: Three out of four blacks, one out of four whites, and one out of three people across the country regardless of race actually believe that President Bush doesn't care about black people.

Sorry, but the question: "Does the president of the United State care about black people" should be a no-brainer. Of course he does should be the overwhelmingly common answer.

Here's a question for Washington's punditocracy: What percentage of people believing that the president doesn't care about black people should be considered alarming?

Bush and the White House are trying urgently to refute this belief with imagery from Bush's three (and soon to be four) trips to the region.

But at his morning photo-op yesterday, his first comments on the issue were far from comprehensive.

"Q Sir, what do you make of some of the comments that have been made by quite a number of people that there was a racial component to some of the people that were left behind and left without help?

"THE PRESIDENT: My attitude is this: The storm didn't discriminate, and neither will the recovery effort. When those Coast Guard choppers, many of whom were first on the scene, were pulling people off roofs, they didn't check the color of a person's skin. They wanted to save lives."

One could argue, of course, that the storm disproportionately impacted those who were left, abandoned by the government, in its path -- most of whom were black and poor. And while no one suggests that chopper pilots were racially selective about who they rescued, the real question is what took the choppers and the other rescuers so long? Why weren't there more of them?

Lisa de Moraes reported on West's criticism in The Washington Post on September 3.

Attack and Defense

Among Bush's leading critics, of course, is Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, who told Wolf Blitzer on CNN last week: "I do not think that this president cares about everybody in America. . . .

"I'm not disputing the fact the president is a nice man, and maybe he's compassionate in his personal life. The truth is that Americans have suffered deeply under this presidency, 80 percent of Americans -- and that black people, Hispanic people, and poor people and old people have suffered disproportionately."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the highest-ranking African American in Bush's government, defended Bush on racial issues yesterday in an interview at the New York Times.

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