Required Reading

Gallup Poll Results Blacks vs Whites (literally) on Katrina

USATODAY.com

Then this from www.opinionjournal.com:

Let's look more closely at these two questions, which are questions 14 and 3, respectively, in the poll results. By 60% to 37%, blacks think the government was slow in rescuing Katrina victims for racial reasons; by 86% to 12%, whites do not think so. By 72% to 21%, blacks think President Bush does not care about black people. By 67% to 26%, whites think he does care.

USA Today doesn't give figures for the population as a whole, but let's extrapolate them. At the 2000 census, 69.1% of the U.S. population was non-Hispanic white, and 12.9% of the population was black. Since we have no polling data on Hispanics or other ethnic groups, our analysis is necessarily limited to the 82% of the population that is either black or NH white. This subgroup is 84.3% white and 15.7% black.

Now, let's weight the black and white responses to these questions to reflect their proportions of the population (the percentages given are of the total black and NH white population):

This means that a vast majority of blacks (72%) disagree with a solid majority of the overall population (60%) on the question of whether Bush cares, and a solid majority of blacks (60%) disagree with an overwhelming majority of the overall population (78%) on the question of whether the rescue was racist.

The truth about race that Katrina illuminates, then, is that, at least when it comes to matters involving race, black Americans are extreme political outliers. This is why attempts to play the race card are politically futile: They have to appeal not just to blacks, but to a substantial minority of whites. The Gallup poll results makes clear that the current racial appeals are not resonating with whites.

posted by vivamanchvegas @ 4:57 PM