[Peace-discuss] Obama and Katrina

[David Green]

Clarence Page is a Tribune columnist who has frittered
away his promise as a voice for racial justice. This
column is a strong indication that Barack Obama is
following the same path.

Clarence Page 
We're still 2 nations, after all these years

Published September 14, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Timing, like money, isn't everything,
but in politics it sure beats whatever is in second
place.

With that in mind, it is significant that U.S. Sen.
Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who has turned down innumerable
invitations, chose this particular time to do his
first nationally televised sit-down interview since
taking office.

If ever there was a time when America needed to hear
the unifying come-together voice that Obama unveiled
during his memorable keynote speech at the 2004
Democratic National Convention, it was now. Hurricane
Katrina has left the biggest eruption over race and
class that America has seen since, oh, the last
century.

"There is not a black America and a white America and
Latino America and Asian America," Obama declared in
his DNC speech to great applause. "There's the United
States of America."

That was then. That's not quite what the senator said
when asked Sunday on ABC's "This Week" by host George
Stephanopoulos whether there was racism involved in
the lack of evacuation planning for poorresidents of
New Orleans.

Obama did not say that President Bush "doesn't care
about black people," as rap star Kanye West said
during a televised fundraiser. Instead, Obama
criticized a historical indifference to the nation's
class divide and, without naming names, seemed to find
plenty of blame to go around, locally and nationally.

He blasted disaster planners who were "so detached
from the realities of inner-city life in New Orleans
... that they couldn't conceive of the notion that
[residents] couldn't load up their SUVs, put $100
worth of gas in there, put some sparkling water and
drive off to a hotel and check in with a credit card."

"There seemed to be a sense," he said, "that this
other America was somehow not on people's radar
screen. And that, I think, does have to do with
historic indifference on the part of government to the
plight of those [low-income citizens] who are
disproportionately African-American."

He added that "passive indifference is as bad as
active malice."

Nice. It's hard to do nuance on TV talk shows, but
Obama seemed to have pulled it off.

His "One America" speech celebrated how far we
Americans have come. His acknowledgement this time of
the "other America" recognizes how far we still have
to go.

So does a new national poll by the Pew Center for the
People and the Press, which shows white and black
attitudes about the Katrina tragedy are worlds apart:

- Sixty-six percent of African-Americans polled
thought the government's response to the crisis would
have been faster if most of the storm's victims had
been white. A mere 17 percent of whites shared that
view.

- Seventy-seven percent of whites felt race would not
have made a difference in the government's response.
Only 27 percent of blacks agreed with that.

Yet the poll also offers encouraging signs of
agreement and hope:

- About half of the respondents, black and white,
faulted state and local governments, as well as the
federal government, for their sluggish response to
Katrina and its aftermath. It is also encouraging to
note that comparable percentages of Republicans,
Democrats and independents--and blacks and
whites--said they donated something to help the
hurricane victims.

As an alternative to Rev. Jesse Jackson, Democratic
Party Chairman Howard Dean and other celebrity
partisans showcased by broadcast media in turbulent
times, Obama's common-sense appeal points the way to a
dream I think most Americans still share, regardless
of race or party. Despite the success of
small-government politics, Americans across racial
lines are a generous people, as long as we think our
money will do some good.

Unfortunately, as Obama told Chicago Tribune reporter
Jeff Zeleny last weekend, the Democratic Party often
has dropped the ball on its core constituents.

"We as Democrats have not been very interested in
poverty or issues relating to the inner city as much
as we should have," Obama said. "Think about the last
presidential campaign; it's pretty hard to focus a
moment on which there was any attention given."

He's right. In their mad dash to win coveted
middle-class and mostly white suburban swing voters,
both parties pushed issues of race and poverty
offstage in recent presidential contests, especially
since the welfare reform law of 1996.

New Orleans made America's invisible poor visible
again, and most Americans did not like what they saw.
It is there, in our shared disgust over this tragic
abandonment of the most needy in our own country, that
we might find a new politics, a coalition of the
poorly served, if we can find the right leaders.

Obama, for one, is showing great promise.

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Clarence Page is a member of the Tribune's editorial
board. E-mail: cptime at aol.com


Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune 




		
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