Black fury at Bush over rescue delay
Richard Luscombe in Miami
Sunday September 4, 2005
The Observer
Civil rights leaders, church officials and rap stars have united in
ferocious criticism of President George Bush's attitude towards the
tens of thousands of black people still trying to escape the hell of
New Orleans.
An overwhelming majority of the refugees are African-Americans, who
make up 67 per cent of the city's half-million population, and some
are questioning whether the government's response would have been
quicker had the catastrophe struck a white community. The Reverend
Calvin Butts, president of New York City's Council of Churches, writes
in today's Observer: 'If this hurricane had struck a white
middle-class neighbourhood in the north-east or the south-west, his
response would have been a lot stronger.'
In an extraordinary outburst during a live television fundraising
concert broadcast on America's NBC network, the rapper Kanye West
said: 'Bush doesn't care about black people. It's been five days
because most of the people are black. America is set up to help the
poor, the black people, the less well-off, as slow as possible. We
already realised a lot of the people that could help are at war right
now.'
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1562518,00.html
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