HoustonChronicle.com - The new White People's Burden: Take a hard look in the mirror

HoustonChronicle.com - The new White People's Burden: Take a hard look in the mirror: "AS devastating as the physical destruction brought by Katrina has been, it may turn out that one of the hurricane's most enduring legacies is the way it made visible the effect of racial and class disparities on who lived and who died, who escaped early and who suffered from being left behind.

Such realities have always been clear to those on the bottom of the hierarchy, of course, and to others willing to face the reality of white supremacy predominance. But now all of white America has an opportunity to see what racialized disparities in wealth and well-being look like, in painfully raw form.

Will we take that opportunity, or turn away out of fear? Do we have the courage to face the meaning of what we have seen? The process requires a kind of honesty that is rare in the history of white America.

The first step is to recognize that for all the talk of diversity and multiculturalism — by liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans alike — much of white America thinks of the United States as a white country. By that I don't just mean that the majority of its citizens are white, though they are — for now but not forever, as demographics shift."