Was race a factor in the response to Katrina?
Re: “Racist charge off the mark,” Sept. 20 Richard Cohen column.
Richard Cohen argues that George W. Bush isn’t racist because he appears to Cohen to be moved personally when he “talks about poor kids and racial and ethnic minorities.” Here Cohen makes the mistake of defining racism as an emotion or attitude held by white people, rather than as a social and material reality lived by black or brown people. He writes that “it was incompetence, not racism” that explains the lack of adequate preparation for Hurricane Katrina and the predictable flooding that followed, as well as the scandalously slow and inept rescue efforts.
What Cohen fails to grasp is that it doesn’t matter whether or not some of Bush’s best friends are black or brown. What matters are the policies his administration supports and their effects on real people. Bush leads a party that has waged war on affirmative action and immigrants, legal and illegal. Furthermore, his tax cuts have benefited only the super-rich, and the cost of his bloody Iraq misadventure is borne disproportionately by soldiers of color.
What right-thinking Americans of all political persuasions and skin tones should do now is examine the system that left tens of thousands of our poorest citizens, who were also overwhelmingly the descendents of slaves, to shift for themselves when the flood waters drowned New Orleans. Race wasn’t the only factor in their abandonment, but to deny that it plays a large role in American politics and society today is to deny the objective reality we all saw on our TV screens three weeks ago.
Ann M. Little, Greeley
The writer is an associate professor of history at Colorado State University.
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I don’t want to be flippant about the twin tragedies of Katrina and Rita, but it appears that President Bush got a mulligan on Katrina.
It’s a national consensus that Bush’s performance immediately after Katrina hit was slow, inept and bewildering, but lucky for him and unlucky for the South, Rita came along. When Rita hit, Bush was ready (as he should have been), and he did as much as he could with his very ordinary abilities. Not that he did anything that you and I couldn’t have done better, but at least he didn’t head the opposite direction, as he did after Katrina hit. And he made sure the nation knew he was in charge. He got more TV time than commercials and he got an even a better tan from being in the South so much.
Too bad he can’t get a mulligan on the Iraq war.
Phil Kenny, Colorado Springs
Roberts confirmation
Re: “Salazar to back Roberts for court,” Sept. 26 news story.
I am unhappy with Sen. Ken Salazar’s support of John Roberts. Roberts’ previous writings and unwillingness to answer questions in confirmation disqualified him. I don’t remember, during Salazar’s election, his speech about getting rid of the separation of church and state, choice and equal rights.
Salazar has not shown any deference to the Coloradans who voted him in. Who will have the courage to speak for us?
Denise Spencer, Denver
Will Coloradans be generous at the polls?
Colorado has overwhelmingly opened its hearts and wallets to aid the victims of Hurricane Katrina. I can only hope they will be as generous to themselves on Nov. 1 and vote “yes” on Referendums C and D to help fund Colorado’s future. Our state has weathered some terrible economic times, due both to the recent recession and the effects of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.
Our schools, roads and bridges are crumbling, as are our investments in health care and education for our children. Colorado suffers from a lack of affordable health care; more than 740,000 Coloradans go without this basic need. Access to prenatal care dropped nationally from 23rd in 1990 to 48th in 2004. What might happen if avian flu comes to Colorado?
Colorado is experiencing an economic hurricane presently. We are sacrificing our future and our children’s well-being by demanding a few dollars now, instead of investing it in our future.
I am sorry I voted for TABOR in 1992. Please join me in aiding Colorado’s recovery from this fiscal hurricane.
Steven Williams, Denver
Life on Earth
Re: “Lunar quest raises questions,” Sept. 21 editorial.
In its editorial, The Post writes, “if we can’t figure out how to live on the moon we are not going to be able to exist on Mars or any other far-off planet.” Have we learned to live on the Earth yet?
Personally, I love exploration, but if we don’t first learn to settle the problems we have on this planet, we are just going to take our problems and issues with us. Shouldn’t we develop a sound way of dealing with life’s little problems just the same way we use sound scientific principles to build space stations and fly to the moon?
Perhaps the principles we are looking for and that apply to humanity without regard to race are already here, and all we have to do is look a little closer to find them. I believe what we are looking for can be found in the Bible – and that the problem is that religion does not teach what is in the Bible.
Paul Kennedy, Northglenn
Bonds’ critics racist?
Re: “Bigotry follows slugger to plate,” Sept. 23 Mark Kiszla column.
Saying that Barry Bonds is booed because of the color of his skin is as absurd as saying that Rafael Palmeiro was booed for the color of his skin when he returned to baseball from his suspension for testing positive for steroids.
When Kiszla says that “White America hates” the fact that Bonds is about to surpass Babe Ruth’s home run record, he is making more of a racist comment than the racism he’s trying to imply in his column.
Baseball fans are booing because of the association of Bonds and performance-enhancing supplements. Nobody, no matter what color he or she is, likes a cheater. When you cheat, others won’t let you play with them. Thus, people feel that Bonds shouldn’t be playing anymore.
When you play the game fairly and humbly and steer clear of cheating, then you won’t be booed.
Michael Lettenmaier, Centennial
The problem with imprisoning debtors
Re: “Wages unfair in prisons,” Sept. 23 Reggie Rivers column.
Thanks to Reggie Rivers for his revealing column about prison labor. An absurdity he didn’t bring up is the number of men in prison for failure to pay child support. Several wise judges have realized the futility of incarcerating men when they are dead broke – prisoners cannot possibly pay any real form of child support. In a future article, perhaps Rivers could explore the injustice of modern-day debtor’s prisons, in which we jail parents who cannot pay the state’s arbitrary amount of child support. More than money, children need both parents.
Don Mathis, Sherman, Texas
Coverage of antiwar rally in Washington
Re: “Thousands rally in D.C. against war,” Sept. 26 news story.
I am at a loss to understand the relative lack of attention given to this major event by your newspaper as well as other media outlets. More than 100,000 people, by one estimate (Washington, D.C., Chief of Police Charles H. Ramsey), converged on our nation’s capital to protest the waging of a war, and the best you can do is a tepid report on Page 18A? You put the Segway convention on Page 5A, for heaven’s sake!
If the mainstream press had questioned the official positions for invading Iraq (now shown to be patently false) from the beginning, it might not have taken 2,000 American lives, tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi lives, and $200 billion for the public to realize this war is and always has been a bad idea.
Roberta M. Richardson, Lakewood
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