This America-as-lethally-racist theme is as factually dishonest as it is morally grotesque. No one denies that most of those stranded in New Orleans were black, but that is because two-thirds of the city's residents -- 326,000 out of a population of 485,000 -- were black. By the same token, most of those who got out before the disaster struck were also black.
Katrina devastated more than black-majority Orleans Parish. Four other Louisiana parishes and three coastal Mississippi counties, all with substantial white majorities, suffered heavily too. Government relief reached them no faster than it did New Orleans. If this were truly a racist country, it would have.
But those with an interest in perpetuating the idea that the chief cause of black misfortune is an American culture that ''doesn't care about black people" decry racism whether it exists or not. ''The ugly truth," declared Democratic chairman Howard Dean, ''is that skin color, age, and economics played a significant role in who survived and who did not." Likewise US Representative Barbara Lee, a California Democrat: ''If anyone ever doubted that there are two Americas, this disaster and our government's shameful response to it have made the division clear for all to see."
Well, there are two Americas. One is the America of Lee, Dean, and Jackson, in which color is paramount and no time is the wrong time to play the race card. The other is the America that has opened its hearts and wallets in a torrent of generosity and compassion for Katrina's victims. As of Monday, reports the Chronicle of Philanthropy, more than $760 million had been donated, a pace of giving without precedent in American history. And that includes only monetary contributions. There are also the immense offerings of in-kind goods of every description -- clothing, food, medicine, dishes, telephones, toys. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers have enlisted in the relief effort. Americans across the country have opened their homes to evacuees from New Orleans. In the words of a Red Cross spokeswoman, ''People are just pouring their hearts out."
And all without the slightest regard to race.
Americans of every color are helping Americans of every color, loving their neighbors as themselves, and proving by their selflessness yet again that racism is dead as a force in mainstream American life.***