Black leaders take wait-and-see attitude

WASHINGTON -- President Bush, seeking to dispel the widely held notion that poor, black Hurricane Katrina victims were abandoned because of their race, said Friday the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast will be successful only if it eliminates poverty and racial injustice.

The president's plea for America to "renew our promise as a land of equality and decency," issued during a national prayer service for storm victims, followed his promise of the night before "to confront this poverty with bold action."

Some black leaders took a wait-and-see attitude.

"I feel his language is encouraging -- he seems to be discovering a reality, the same reality that I see," said NAACP president Bruce Gordon. "Now what we need to see is whether he will use the George Bush-style conviction to eliminate poverty."

The images of storm victims, particularly in New Orleans, spending days waiting for food, water and rescue in miserable shelter conditions exposed the region's persistent, racially rooted poverty and disturbed many around the country. A recent AP-Ipsos poll showed more than a third of Americans felt deeply that the government would have responded more quickly if most of the victims had not been poor and black. Among blacks, the percentage feeling that way shot up to 75 percent.

Bishop T.D. Jakes, the best-selling black author and head of the 30,000-member Potter's House church in Dallas, on Friday called upon Americans not to rest until the poor are raised to an acceptable living standard and to be willing to "love them enough to pay the bill."

"We can no longer be a nation that overlooks the poor and the suffering," Jakes said, delivering the sermon at the National Cathedral prayer service before Bush spoke.