Bush not a racist?

Editor,
Racism is 2001 does not equate with wearing a hood and lynching black people. Racism today equals unreflectively assuming white privilege, and this attitude pervades every aspect of George Bush's policies, from All Children Left Behind, to cuts in social spending, to tax cuts for the rich.

George Bush is not merely a "benign" or "well-meaning" racist either. Look at Republican electoral tactics in FL in 2000 and OH in 2004 that systematically and ruthlessly disenfranchised black voters -- Katherine Harris's "cleansing" of the voter rolls in FL and J. Kenneth Blackwell's calculated under-equipping of predominantly black polling places.

White people prattle on about the "culture of poverty" and "individual initiative" and "responsibility", all the while refusing even to acknowledge their hoarding of this nation's wealth -- let alone the planet's wealth -- for themselves, driving past desperately unlivable non-white neighborhoods on their way to work as if these are immutable facts of life.

Please read Jonathan Kozol's cover story in the Sept. 2005, issue of Harper's magazine. Thanks.