Barbara Bush,Class, Race and the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

Barbara Bush, Class, Race and the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

Barbara Bush is in her dotage but it is a Republican dotage. Age, like booze, clouds judgment but sometimes the elderly, like the drunk, speak more of what is truly in their hearts unclouded by judgment. She does not get a pass on her comments about the "scary" thought that the Katrina refugees, overwhelmingly African-American, might want to stay permanently in Texas, nor that, because they were "underprivileged" to start with, being housed in a sports arena hundreds of miles from home probably isn't so bad for them.

I am so weary of race and discussion about race. For a long time I had truly thought that the best way to "deal with" the race relations in America was just to shut up about them. In the '60's Atlanta had a slogan for itself, "The City That's Too Busy to Hate." That was the approach I decided was best. Let's all get busy and stop all this talk. And I do think we talk too much about EVERYTHING.

But then, in examining my own reaction to the criminal activity in New Orleans after Katrina passed ("Medium, Message, Race and the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina," Sept.3)I realized that I at least had to think more about my own attitudes toward race. And that was depressing and wearying. I thought I had gotten past that. Hell, I never thought I was in that, i.e. in having a "race problem." And of course we seldom do. All of us think that we're fair-minded people. Few if any of us can admit to ourselves, much less to others, that we may not be as color-blind as we hold ourselves out to be.

I think racism, such a harsh word, maybe "racially jaundiced thinking" is more accurate, at least more palatable, is spread fairly evenly across the political spectrum. The Republicans are more harsh--more likely, for example, to use the Willy Horton ad to further their presidential ambitions--than the Democrats, but the Democrats, in the choices they make and don't make about where to live, who their real friends are, what schools they send their children too, how they protesteth too much by trumpeting their black friends, supporting black candidates and policies like affirmative action and liberally throwing around the racist label at others with whom they disagree, the Democrats too think race consciously. We all do. Not just Republicans but Democrats. And not just white people but black people too. There is black racism too.

What surprised me more about Mrs. Bush's comments was the "class-ism." The refugees were underprivileged so this isn't so bad, maybe even a step up! I don't think a Democrat would ever say, or think, that. Democrats truly believe, as I do, that to a significant extent a society's greatness can be measured by how it treats it's least fortunate. There is more caring, heartfelt caring, there than in the Republican world view.

Kevin Phillips, no Democrat, has been the most persistent popular writer on this subject. His views are a little too conspiratorial for me, a little too fearful of Bush-like elitism being a threat to democracy in general but there's bad news on the class front also. Those distribution of wealth statistics, that the top 1% have 20-30-whatever percent of wealth in American and the bottom 20-30-whatever percent have 1% of the wealth, those really do bother me. I cannot justify them with a "rising tide lifts all boats" insouciance or a meritocratic "they get what they deserve" thought. And then to say that the refugees are better off for being underprivileged in the first place, that they feel the displacement less than the overprivileged would because the place they were displaced from sucked worse...well.

I feel so naive, so stupid. Unfortunately those are not unknown feelings to me either. I thought we were better than all this. I thought I was better than this.

We still have a lot to talk about.

-Benjamin Harris