In Hampton University Speech, Obama Said Government Incompetence Was “Colorblind”

Rather than playing the race card to an audience at a black college, then-Senator Obama was clear that the lackluster response to Hurricane Katrina was not about race. A transcript of the speech, a video of which is driving the right-wing narrative of the day, was printed in the Chicago Sun Times the day of his speech, June 5, 2007:

“Look at what happened in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast when Katrina hit. People ask me whether I thought race was the reason the response was so slow. I said, ‘No. This Administration was colorblind in its incompetence.’ But everyone here knows the disaster and the poverty happened long before that hurricane hit. All the hurricane did was make bare what we ignore each and every day which is that there are whole sets of communities that are impoverished, that don’t have meaningful opportunity, that don’t have hope and they are forgotten. This disaster was a powerful metaphor for what’s gone on for generations.”

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.