President Bush cares about black Americans, despite what hip-hop artist Kanye West says, a group of leading South Florida black Republicans said Monday.
The Coalition of South Florida African and Caribbean American Republican Party members from the tri-county region didn't blame Bush, but New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco for the slow response to victims of Hurricane Katrina.
"The real culprit in Katrina was and is the lack of local and state and planning and a bumbling, bickering bureaucracy at all levels, including Washington, D.C.," said Levi Williams, a lawyer and leading Republican voice in Broward County.
They took offense to the comparison some black leaders have made to the president and "Bull" Connor, the late Montgomery, Ala., police chief who turned water hoses and dogs on civil rights demonstrators in the 1960s.
And they rejected what West said in an off-script comment during an NBC fund-raising telethon for Katrina relief: "President Bush doesn't care about black people.''
The coalition also criticized black leaders and Democrats.
"We have watched and listened over the last several weeks with a great deal of frustration and dismay while political opportunists and race-baiting black leaders and Democratic politicians took advantage of the tragedy and suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, particularly in New Orleans, to engage in political opportunism and playing the race card," Williams said, reading from a four-page statement.
"Equally disturbing is that many have used this tragedy to fabricate and distort the truth on the president's commitment to poor Americans," Williams said.
He cited a litany of examples of what the Bush administration has done, including $368 billion for programs to fight poverty in the 2006 budget, a 49 percent increase in education funding, a $4.6 billion increase in Title I funds, more money for black colleges and homeowner initiatives.
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