Of the many sorry things about the contemporary United States that the Katrina catastrophe has exposed, perhaps none is more depressing than what it showed about the abiding divide in American thinking about race and racism. The televised and photographed spectacle of Katrina’s aftermath in New Orleans in particular revealed that the vast majority of those worst affected were black, in numbers disproportionate even to the large percentage of blacks within the city. At first the mainstream media restricted themselves to muttering nervously about this fact, but the racial dimension (and divide) was brought into open debate as a result of Rapper Kanye West’s declaration, during an unscripted moment on live TV at a Katrina fundraiser, that, "George Bush doesn't care about black people.” Inevitably, a partisan firestorm erupted. [...]