STORM DAMAGE Will Katrina cause us to face reality? BY IAN DONNIS

For a city whose appeal is built on sybaritic charms, New Orleans didn’t disappoint during an overdue visit in the mid-’90s. The diner-like Hummingbird Grill offered bargain basement fried chicken. For a bit of old-school panache, there were oysters Rockefeller and Sazeracs, a mix of bourbon and bitters, at Galatoire’s. A bar across the street from my benignly sketchy hostel featured a pool table and a steady stream of Johnny Cash on the jukebox. A saucy Australian gal, encountered at a dusty jazz club in the French Quarter, became a new friend.

So my friend Steve and I felt fairly buoyant as we set out for the Dooky Chase, a black Creole restaurant that appeared on a map to be a short walk from the Quarter. As we continued strolling, though, we quickly found ourselves in unfamiliar terrain: two white boys in a blighted black neighborhood. Although we reached the destination without incident — stepping into an elegant and sparsely occupied restaurant — the feeling of being out of place during the longer-than-expected walk sparked a lingering sense of barely acknowledged discomfort. Perhaps our waitress picked up on it — or maybe it was just unusual for white folks to walk in off the street without a reservation. After serving dessert, she graciously volunteered to call us a cab.

President Bush won’t be able to ride away so effortlessly from the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina. Although his like-minded apologists are attempting to shift the blame for the inept response to local and state officials, the federal government’s initial inaction speaks for itself – especially when those bearing the brunt of the disaster are overwhelmingly poor and black.

It might be a little simplistic to believe, as singer Kanye West put it, that the president doesn’t care about black people (although his policies are surely designed to benefit the most privileged members of our society). It’s also true that racial issues are rarely discussed in America, rarely acknowledged, until there’s some sort of crisis, and then only until something else comes along.

Hurricane Katrina highlights how Americans will respond with generosity when presented with a compelling need. If the killer storm has another beneficial effect, it could be in forcing us to take that collective uncomfortable walk in a needy and unfamiliar neighborhood.