“Now, Katrina is a bellwether issue for a lot of people. And it means it's going to complicate his relationship with some of these ministers and their parishioners.”
“[Many blacks] have deep emotional questions ... A lot of these people are their kin. The social network of the black community is spread throughout the South.”
“Katrina has blown that outreach away. This has become a powerful emotional issue - a national issue - that will severely limit Bush's future outreach efforts, because the victims in Louisiana and Mississippi have huge family networks scattered all over the country.”
“still has an opportunity to reach out to blacks during the reconstruction, giving the displaced people a role in the project. But there is a problem. Already, he has made some mistakes. No-bid contracts are going to firms with close ties to Bush, and those don't tend to be minority-owned businesses.”
“Somebody has to fill in the blanks as to why the response was different, ... We have a traditional response - that a black life is not as valued as a white life.”
“Black people are mad because they feel the reason for the slow response is because those people are black and they didn't support George Bush. And I don't expect that feeling to go away anytime soon.”
“I think he said a lot of the right things. [Republicans are] putting money behind this outreach and he ran down a number of things that the administration should be doing that would be attractive to African-Americans.”
