Nearly one-in-three

September 13, 2005

Dan Froomkin raised a point today that should be a striking wake-up call to the entire Bush gang: a significant percentage of the public seems to believe the president is willing to leave African Americans behind.

Froomkin pointed to a Gallup poll that asked respondents whether they believe Bush does, or does not, “care about black people.”

Among blacks, 21 percent say he does and 72 percent say he doesn’t.

Among whites, 67 percent say he does and 26 percent say he doesn’t.

Overall, 62 percent say he does and 31 percent say he doesn’t.

Obviously, that’s a pretty dramatic rift. But consider the absolute numbers: Three out of four blacks, one out of four whites, and one out of three people across the country regardless of race actually believe that President Bush doesn’t care about black people.

Sorry, but the question: “Does the president of the United State care about black people” should be a no-brainer. Of course he does should be the overwhelmingly common answer.

Of course it should, and yet, it isn’t. Nearly one-in-three Americans — even one-in-four white people — believe that the president simply can’t be bothered to consider the welfare of African Americans.

In effect, all of these people are questioning the character of the president. Forget job performance; those who believe Bush doesn’t care about black people are saying, in no uncertain terms, that the president is a racist who is unconcerned with 12% of the population.

If the poll is accurate, this is stunning. Froomkin’s wrap-up question needs an answer:

Here’s a question for Washington’s punditocracy: What percentage of people believing that the president doesn’t care about black people should be considered alarming?

We are at a dangerous juction in our history right now. The events of the last two weeks could severely damage the work of 6 decades of racial
cooperation. There has always been a tacit undestanding that race should not matter among liberals and that economic gains should help lift all people out of poverty and into a better way of life. Remember that Black Americans across this country were looking at those pictures of screaming, abandoned Black New Orleanians and
may have come to some very different conclusions than white Americans.
They saw callous indifference bordering on criminal conspiracy, and remember conspiratorial thinking among Black Americans can easily be fanned into violent reaction. They may very well be saying: ” If that’s how the Brothers and Sisters were treated in New Orleans, are we next?”
For all practical purposes the largest concentration of Black Americans in a single county has been purged ( or ethnically cleansed) of its Black population. It won’t take long for other Black populations in other areas
to begin wondering if they are next on the list for removal.
Bush’s ineptitude and callous indifference could well result in long-term
damage to the peace and internal security of this country.
White Americans need to see that a great injustice was done in New Orleans and not thoughtlessly ignore the justifiable concerns of Black Americans.

  • White Americans need to see that a great injustice was done in New Orleans and not thoughtlessly ignore the justifiable concerns of Black Americans.

    this white american sees the great injustice done in New Orleans and the rest of the areas hit by Katrina. The problem is that this white american is essentially powerless as I do not live in a Red state and have absolutely no intention to move to one. I will continue to advocate for DEM politicians (real ones, not DINOs or other freaks of nature like Zell Miller) and liberal policies.

  • The follow-up question needed to be: “Does Bush care about any people?”

    I would think the answer is about the same!

  • Michael beat me to it.

    So I’m kind of surprised by how many white
    people think Bush cares about black people,
    because I don’t think Bush gives a damn
    about anyone but himself and his cronies
    and other rich people.

    Apparently, most Americans think Bush
    cares about just plain folks. I don’t.

  • A majority of Americans elected Bush, AFTER four years of his nonsense. Clearly, the whole proposition that a majority of the American people are rational and decent has to be called into question. Considering that a reported 40% of Americans think Bush is doing an OK job, despite the deficit, the debacle in Iraq and the failure in the wake of Katrina, I can’t get too excited about what a smaller percentage think, unless I know who those people are.

    What I get from the polls is that the vast majority of self-identified Republicans are in the grip of a fanatic partisanship, in which they are guzzling the kool-aid. Ask Americans what they think of state and local response to Katrina, and you get basically the same answers in the same proportions, regardless of party identification. Everybody is appreciating the same reality, although with the usual diversity of viewpoints. Ask people what they think of Bush, and you find the Republicans are off in some fairyland.

    The same phenomenon applies to race. People identify with their own race; that aspect of race continues in full force in America, and that racial self-identification prejudices people in the most remarkable way. If you are black, you think OJ may have been innocent; if you have any other racial self-identification, you think OJ almost certainly killed Nicole and her friend.

    I’m white, and I’m not certain that my own thinking is entirely clear. I am a Democrat, but I do not think Bush is any kind of white supremacist; I don’t think he deliberately abandoned the people of New Orleans, because they were black. (I do think he cares not one whit for the poor, and regards the middle class as George Hearst regarded the Homestake.)

    What I do think, is that New Orleans is in the South, and in the South, the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow segregation is that, politically, the poor, and especially (but, by no means exclusively) the poor and black, are systematically neglected. When New Orleans did their disaster preparedness, they recognized that the city would have to be evacuated, but instead of facing up to the enormous resource requirements of such an evacuation, the leaders of the city, including the multimillionaire black mayor, shrugged their shoulders. Local and State government across the South do not provide adequately for their poor and black citizens. That’s a political fact and policy, which reflects the political will of the southern body politic. It is worse in the “Deep South” than it is in the Middle South, because slavery and racism were more intense, and so worse in Mississippi and Alabama than in North Carolina and Arkansas. In a State like Michigan, almost every school district (only one fell short last time I looked) meets reasonable standards for funding elementary education, even under Republican governors. In Alabama, even a Republican governor cannot persuade a political majority to reform a tax system, which leaves desperately poor counties with desperately poor school systems. Alabama’s legislature, however, allocates more per student to its State universities than does Michigan; of course its universities mostly serve the white and middle class.

    So, no, I don’t find anything remarkable in the polling statistics. I see racial “partisanship” and the ignorance of actual conditions and policies, which purely “partisan” opinion usually engenders and fosters.

    Louisiana knew that New Orleans might have to be evacuated, and seeing that necessity and the great difficulties, which it would entail, punted. Those difficulties, it should be said, are not merely a matter of having enough buses and bus drivers handy. The extremely poor can be very difficult to deal with; they are poorly educated, agoraphobic to an amazing degree, skeptical of anyone “trying to help”, difficult to reach, persuade and organize — ask anyone, who has ever tried to get the poor to vote!. Bush is responsible for those problems and the failure of State government to address them only in the remote sense, which comes from the fact that Bush is in power by means of a “southern strategy” of exploiting the politics of racial and class prejudices, which have characterized the South since 1830 and before.

  • Was this question asked of previous Presidents, and what was the breakdown of the responses?

    And, as most of the comments above say in one way or another, I don’t think that Bush discriminates when it comes to not caring about just about anyone he’s not personally connected to.

  • It’s not about race. We really need to get past this– it plays into the Repug’s hands. It’s a Democratic tic to keep harping on race (harking back to the glory days of the Civil Rights movement?), and I think it’s counterproductive– hence the discrepancy in the polls. Shrub has African-American cabinet members, for crying out loud! He gets along with rich black televangelists and businesspeople just fine, and when “Chevron” Condi goes and buys several thousands of dollars worth of shoes on 5th Avenue, she’s right there in Shrub’s tribe– race be damned. The man is quite obviously not a racist. He likes people of colour just fine– if they are rich, successful capitalists, televangelists, sports heroes, military heroes, or something similarly “competitive”.

    Shrub is not a racist, he a CLASS-ist. See, in the USA, mentioning CLASS is taboo, even moreso than race. But it ain’t about race.

    You hear me?

    THIS IS NOT ABOUT RACE! It’s about class. Or, more accurately, about winners vs. losers.

    A more pertinent poll question would be: “Do you think Bush cares about POOR people?”. I’ll bet the numbers are quite interesting. I’d be surprised if anyone– black or white– thinks Shrub gives a damn about poor people.

    More specifically– and to get to the heart of his psychology– “Do you think Bush cares about WEAK or NEEDY people?” The answer, IMHO, is a resounding, absolute, complete and utter NO!

    This is essential to his world-view, and to that of the Social Darwinist Repug party: the Grover Norquists and Steve Forbses’ who run it. I have to go back to Lakoff here: Shrub cares about the STRONG, the MANLY, the MACHO. This is why he is pro-globe-dominating-corporations, pro-military, pro-Israel, pro-Christian-fundamentalist. Those are all deeply macho organisations with an utterly Darwinist worldview.

    Shrub has nothing but barely-veiled contempt for the weak, the needy, the disadvantaged. This has a lot to do with his own background, and his inability to accept– or even admit– his own neediness and weakness.

    Makes me really nostalgic for “Ah feel yer pain” Clinton. I wasn’t a Clinton fan, but he just exuded empathy and compassion– in word and in deed. By contrast, it’s obvious that Shrub couldn’t give a shit. He’s the perfect figurehead for the “devil take the hindmost” party.

    The fundamental belief that we should and must take care of our less-fortunate fellow citizens– that sense of responsibility–, is what Democrats bring to the table– and it cuts across the lines of race! So please let’s not limit ourselves here: Shrub doesn’t give a shit about you if you are weak or needy. Full stop, end of story– and let’s get the word out how we are different. Who knows… maybe we’ll even win some elections!

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