Richard Cohen of the Washington Post opines today that President Bush is not racist for his slow and bumbling response to the suffering down South. I agree with him.

Bush haters (and I’m one of them) have been quick to jump on the President for his alleged racism. “If the hurricane victims had been white, he would have sent troops and rescue boats quicker.”

Well the hurricane mostly affected whites. Not the New Orleans populace, but the Mississippi whites who live in Biloxi and surrounding areas. They too have suffered immense damage to their homes, their lives and their city. The white people of Mississippi have also not seen FEMA, have also called the “emergency” services number and gotten busy signals. They are suffering and they aren’t black.

Nobody who lives in America can argue that race does not figure in our thinking. My own reaction to the behavior of the people inside the Superdome who raped, beat and terrorized one another merely confirmed my worse suspicions about black Americans. No Republican forced the gang rape of a seven- year old girl. No GOP politician made anyone carry weapons inside of the stadium. Conditions inside were less than human but it was the behavior of the human beings that is most disturbing.

When the poor nations of Thailand and Sri Lanka were hit by the tragic tsunami last December, strangers and tourists were taken inside homes and give food, water and a place to sleep. When the few tourists left inside New Orleans went outside after the hurricane waters had breached the levees, they were confronted by armed outlaws on the streets. Liberals who make excuses for the impoverished here in the US ought to look at poor Asians who are rich in human values.

We will see many more hurricanes in the coming years. The development of the coastal areas, and federal financed flood insurance along with payola and pork will bring back Biloxi. New Orleans will erect higher levees, and hire public relations firms to dream up great tourist commercials for fine dining and quaint hotels.

But in the land where the Mississippi River drains into the Gulf of Mexico, the same grinding poverty, humid swamp clogged minds and age- old folkways of religious superstition and violence will fester and grow and overtake the Bayou again, strangling vines of retardation around the tree of life.

That is who we are. No politician made us this way. They are merely the enablers.