Our Brother's Keeper

I am a white man, but I have always had a special relationship with the black community. From the time I appointed the first ever African-American president of a major Jewish organization-Oxford Rhodes scholar Cory Booker (who today is one of America's premiere young politicians-to becoming the first white radio host on America's oldest black radio station, I have always felt an affinity and kinship with my African-American brothers and sisters.

To be sure, I possess no bleeding heart, and with my many conservative political positions, I am certainly no liberal. Rather, my affinity with the black community stems from my being a man of faith. My foremost belief is that we are all G-d's children, that we are all equally loved by our Father in heaven, that every human life is of infinite value, and that the best demonstration of that fact is to look at every human being as our brother and sister, however different.

Indeed, I fervently believe that most people of faith-whatever their faith tradition-affirm the infinite preciousness of all human life. But in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I have glimpsed reactions from self-professed people of faith that call this assumption into question.

Six weeks ago, I drove my children through the broken and crumbling African-American neighborhoods of east New Orleans in search of the Chalmette battlefield where on Jan. 8, 1815, Andrew Jackson delivered the greatest blow that the Americans ever inflicted upon the British. Seeing these communities was sobering but nothing new. I had seen similar poverty in black neighborhoods all across America. These blighted neighborhoods condemned many of their residents to a life bereft of dignity. The white response to the distress of black neighborhoods is often not one of concern, but one of fear and denial. They are simply terrified of walking or even driving through them. Or they pretend that such inequality no longer exists.

Hurricane Katrina, of course, inundated these poor, black neighborhoods and awakened many white Americans to the plight of the people who lived in them. Seeing black Americans living on freeways and struggling to survive, because many had no means by which to evacuate the city, galvanized white concern more than at any other time since the civil-rights movement. And while I do not believe that the federal government intentionally stalled rescue efforts because most of the trapped Orleanians were black, there is no question that if Beverly Hills had been hit by a similar catastrophe, the response would have been much quicker and more comprehensive.

It was for this reason that I decided to use my daily radio show on KUTR, a Mormon-owned station in Salt Lake City to try to assist African-American evacuees who had been moved to Camp Williams, in Bluffdale, Utah, in finding permanent local housing. I hosted as a guest on my show Zachary Smith, whose home was decimated by Hurricane Katrina. He and his family lived on Interstate 10 for four days before being evacuated with approximately 1,000 other, mostly African-American, survivors. Zachary indicated that although he and the other evacuees had been treated with great warmth by the Utah authorities, he was aggravated by the 10:30 p.m. curfew, and said that the curfew made the evacuees feel like they were "in prison." Could it be that the curfew had something to do with the overwhelmingly white population of Utah feeling uncomfortable with African-American faces, roaming their streets at night, Zachary wondered? Were they truly welcome?

I assured Zachary that the mostly Mormon families of Utah were warm and charitable people, incredibly generous, without a prejudiced bone in their bodies. In an effort to find permanent accommodation for the many homeless families, I asked Zachary whether some of the African-American families might wish to stay permanently in Utah rather than return to New Orleans. He indicated that many of the families would love to exercise that option, should they be welcomed into the state.

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