The Politics of Racism

I felt compelled to write something on the latest stories involving President Obama. Various news sources are throwing the President under the bus for how he is handling the BP oil spill. Yes, something needs to be done. By all accounts it looks like something is being done. BP is doing what it can at this point. Is that enough? Maybe not. That is something that will be addressed at a later time. Right now all resources need to be put to stopping the oil. I saw a report on ABC news yesterday where they were interviewing people on various issues facing the country and how they feel the President is handling them. All I really got from the story was that everything from the BP oil spill to Memorial Day beach congestion is the President's fault and that he isn't acting, or isn't acting fast enough for the citizen's liking.

Let's just be clear, these people blaming him are flat out racists. There is no other explanation to why they don't believe the President is doing all he can. There is no way you can say President Obama is doing nothing. Let's just compare him to our previous president and how he fared during times of national and environmental crisis. Now to be fair, President Bush wasn't to blame for Katrina. Just as President Obama isn't responsible for the current oil spill. There is one key difference, however. President Obama isn't responsible for the clean up, BP Oil is. He should oversee and push to get it done, but it is their mess and they are the ones who should be handling it. Katrina was different. President Bush was responsible for the clean up of Katrina because the ocean wasn't about to fix the mess it caused.

What makes the Katrina situation even worse than the BP oil spill is, according to reports President Bush and other government agencies were warned about the impending damage of Katrina. This is vastly different from an oil platform blowing up with little warning. From reading the above report it seems that everyone was aware of what was coming and was either lying about the readiness of our emergency response capabilities, or were simply incompetent.

In general, I don't like to point out another person's failing when trying to defend someone but, in this case it needs to happen. I would also like to point out that on September 11, 2001, during one of the most horrific attacks the country has ever endured, President Bush sat in a classroom for 7 MINUTES after he was told the country was under attack. 7 MINUTES. If Obama did that he would be up for impeachment and maybe execution. I just want some consistent standards for how we go about judging our leaders, and skin color is not one of them.