Poll: Confidence in disaster response falls

Racial divide
Almost from the beginning, Hurricane Katrina has proved to be a racial flashpoint in America, with some critics charging the response was slow because so many of its victims were black.

And the poll found notable racial differences in the way the nation thinks about the storm and the recovery effort a half-year later.

Minorities were also nearly twice as likely as whites — 42 percent to 22 percent — to say the government should be spending more on the recovery. Minorities were also less likely to express confidence in how the government would handle a future disaster.

And 77 percent of minorities polled said Katrina recovery should be a higher priority for government spending than the war in Iraq, compared with just 58 percent among whites.

In all, Americans said by a 2-to-1 margin that the Gulf Coast rebuilding effort should be a higher priority than the Iraq war.

“Charity starts at home,” said Thomas Stockman, 63, a Vietnam veteran in Lawton, Okla. “Take care of your own country before you get involved taking care of other countries.”

But to Colony, the stay-at-home father, Iraq should be the higher priority because it is tied to the war on terrorism. “Katrina is nothing,” he says, “compared to if someone blows up half of — well, pick a city.”

The poll did find one somber point of broad agreement among Americans. By a margin of almost nine to one, they characterized the current state of storm-stricken Louisiana and Mississippi as badly damaged, not mostly recovered.

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