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GUESTS: Maya Wiley, Founder and Director of the Center for Social Inclusion and a civil rights attorney, Tracie Washington, Director of the NAACP Gulf Coast Advocacy Center and Civil Rights Attorney

On Monday of this week, in an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams, Professor Michael Eric Dyson accused President and Laura Bush of being “clueless patricians” in the context of Katrina and the suffering of Black Americans. Today, on part 3 of our week-long series on Katrina, we focus on the role of race in last year’s tragedy. An AP-IPSOS poll earlier this month showed that 57% of Americans fear that the country is ill-prepared to protect them from natural disasters. That’s up from 44% in the immediate aftermath of Katrina. In addition, the poll showed that people of color, and those who were less wealthy and less educated were more worried about becoming victims of a natural disaster, compared with wealthier, more educated whites. Many reporters from the mainstream corporate media saw first hand the disproportionate effects of government negligence on Black Americans. Yet, scouring the news a year later, reveals that many in the mainstream media are backpedaling from any assertions that racism was at the root of the tragedy.