Nevertheless, I don't think Bush has a racist bone in his body. More likely - and more to the point here - he suffers an affliction common to many of us. That is, an unfamiliarity and discomfort with poverty.
For most of us, especially whites, New Orleans was a big, fun town where you get offered a drink as soon as you're off the plane - a noisy, hot, humid, sexy, sensual dreamscape where adults walk down the French Quarter's narrow streets drinking "Hurricanes," gazing at beautiful women who turn out to be men, marveling at the music and the mirrored miracle that is Galatoire's, and waking up to chicory coffee and beignets.
We don't see the poverty on the periphery because, to be blunt, it spoils our movie. Poverty, especially when we're on vacation, becomes invisible. If we do happen to catch an accidental glimpse, we avert our eyes. Katrina put an end to that denial by exposing what we didn't want to see - the other New Orleans that is poor and, like the city, mostly black.
Not just a little bit poor, but embarrassingly poor in Earth's richest nation. Too poor to leave in many cases, though some were also stubborn, we're learning. Too poor to own or rent a car, or to buy the gas that was hitting $3.50 a gallon in the hours shortly after the storm. Way too poor to buy a plane ticket or rent a motel room.
Too poor to be noticed? That's a question for all hearts to answer.
The stories out of New Orleans will continue to break all but the hardest hearts in the next several weeks and months, but the one that needs to die soonest is that America turned her back on blacks. America, starting with the city of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana, turned her back on the poor.