Barbara Bush's clueless attitude towards class in this statement will be interpreted by a lot of people as racial insensitivity, whether she actually means it or not. Below is her "Let them eat Astroturf" moment, followed by an excerpt with George H.W. and Barbara Bush from an interview last night on Larry King live:
Almost everyone I've talked to said we're gonna move to Houston....What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this --this is working very well for them.
- Barbara Bush
Atrios has the mp3 so you can hear it for yourself. I can already predict the apologists...they'll probably say that the scary thing is the strain on city resources from a large refugee population or something related. And I guess that's maybe sort of possible if you squint realllly hard and cock your head and hold your breathe for about two minutes....then that might be what she's saying. Or there are the more obvious interpretations. She's either talking about a poor "they" or a "black" they.
Next she's saying that since these people are underprivileged, living in a dome with thousands of fellow refugees after losing your home and possessions is "working very well". Which strongly implies that if this happened to someone that was not underprivileged, then this would not be working out "very well".
These comments are obviously pretty insensitive/clueless when it comes to class issues in our country. That's already bad. What will make these comments more inflammatory is that they'll be interpreted as being insensitive/clueless about race, whether she means it or not.
Here's an excerpt from an interview last night on Larry King. Notice how offended both George H.W. and Barbara about racial accusations against Dubya, and also how Larry King confuses race and class in the discussion.
KING: But even the president said the reaction should have been faster that he wasn't satisfied.
G. BUSH: Sure. I don't think -- certainly I'm not satisfied but I'm just talking about the blame game and there was one particularly vicious comment that the president didn't care, was insensitive on ethnicity.
KING: Yes.
G. BUSH: Insensitive about race. Now that one hurt because I know this president and I know he does care and you know what can he do? He can just go out and do what he's doing today, showing that the federal government is involved, has been involved, will continue to be involved.
Huge numbers of dollars have been appropriated or signed off on for the Congress, both Senate and the House and he had to push forward. He cannot listen to every critic from the editorial page of "The New York Times."
KING: But it's true isn't it that Katrina devastated the three states, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana that probably would be the three poorest states in terms of income and therefore the poorest Americans were the most affected.
G. BUSH: Definitely and that's what's so sad about that and that's what was so in a way heartening about today. We're embracing them, holding them in our arms here and they're saying they want to get on with their lives. It was inspiring today.
But you're absolutely right. These states were, you know, what state can afford this kind of disaster? But these states particularly are vulnerable and what gets me is the resilience of their people. It's marvelous.
KING: How did you react, Barbara, when race was brought up and someone mentioned that your son doesn't care?
B. BUSH: I don't believe that. I really didn't hear it. I'm going to tell you the truth but I don't believe it. I know it's not true and of course as George says if you want to really get in trouble criticize my son to me.
KING: I know.
B. BUSH: But I really didn't hear that at all today. People came up to me all day long and said "God bless your son," people of different races and it was very, very moving and touching and they felt like when he flew over that it made all the difference in their lives so I just don't hear that.
41 notes that he's unhappy about comments where people say that the President doesn't care about black people (I guess he was watching Kanye). Larry King then responds by basically saying "But isn't it true that they were mostly poor", which doesn't make much sense since they were just talking about race. And then 41 continues talking about class without skipping a beat.
This demonstrates how talking about class in the aftermath of Katrina is easily confused with talking about race. And when Barbara makes comments that are obviously insensitive to class ("What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is they (the poor) want to all stay in Texas"), these words will be interpreted by many as comments that are insensitive about race ("What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is they (black people) want to all stay in Texas").
Now I don't think that Barbara Bush or George W. Bush are racist. In the rest of the Larry King interview, Barbara Bush seems to be really happy about how Houston has opened up and that they're able to help people. But her (and Dubya's) insensitivity to class issues will continue to invoke race, whether they mean it or not.
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