From AP:
President Bush denied Monday there was any racial component to people being left behind after Hurricane Katrina, despite suggestions from some critics that the response would have been quicker if so many of the victims hadn’t been poor and black.
“The storm didn’t discriminate and neither will the recovery effort,” Bush said. “The rescue efforts were comprehensive. The recovery will be comprehensive.”
I’ve been awfully critical of President Bush, but I’m tempted to believe him on this one. I suspect that the response would have been quicker if the storm had hit, say, San Francisco or Boston, but that probably has more to do with the fact that they’re richer, more prosperous, and ultimately more important cities in terms of media attention and, more broadly, in terms of America’s sense of self (which is why a disaster in New York means so much more than a disaster anywhere else).
But race and poverty were indeed important factors — before the storm hit, according to Matt Yglesias:
The race and class issues entered the picture earlier. Poor people face a distinct set of challenges when faced with things like evacuation orders, and I think it’s undeniable that a big part of the reason nobody seems to have given consideration to those realities is specifically that the people in question were poor and largely black. That, after all, has been the general pattern of this administration. The federal government runs various programs designed to help the poor. That set of activities has been made uniformly less generous under the period of Republican rule. And they haven’t been made less generous thanks to broad, across-the-board spending cuts. Virtually nothing has been cut except anti-poverty spending.
The point is, many of the poor (including the black poor of New Orleans) had no chance. Not because Bush is a racist or because there was some racial component to the relief and recovery efforts, but because they had already been beaten down and left hopeless and helpless by a society that largely ignores them. They’re the “other” America, and they’re still suffering.
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Here’s more from the AP story:
In a sign that Bush is growing weary of the accusations, he testily replied to a reporter who asked whether he felt let down by federal officials on the ground.
“Look, there will be plenty of time to play the blame game,” he said. “That’s what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to say somebody is at fault. And, look, I want to know. I want to know exactly what went on and how it went on, and we’ll continually assess inside my administration.”
He also sharply rejected suggestions that the nation’s military was stretched too thinly with the war in Iraq to deal with the Gulf Coast devastation. “We’ve got plenty of troops to do both,” the president said. “It is preposterous to claim that the engagement in Iraq meant there weren’t enough troops.”
Bush said Congress should consider whether the federal government should have more authority to step into disaster areas without a request from the states. He said lawmakers should examine what happened and make recommendations for change so the government can prepare for future disasters, including the possibility of a biological attack.
“We need to make sure that this country is knitted up as well as it can be in order to deal with significant problems and disasters,” Bush said. “Meantime, we’ve got to keep moving forward. And I know there has been a lot of second-guessing. I can assure you I’m not interested in that. What I’m interested in is solving problems. And there’ll be time to take a step back and to take a sober look at what went right, what didn’t go right.”
And that’s all your responsibility, Mr. President. But so is what happened in Katrina’s immediate aftermath.