Yesterday, George W. Bush took responsibility, sort of:

"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government and to the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility."

That’s an apology?? What, exactly, does it mean when he “takes responsibility”?

Since he usually takes credit for anything positive and only fires his crony-appointees when his back is against a wall, how does he plan to demonstrate his remorse?

Will he resign in shame? I should live so long.

Will he fire his cronies from important posts on which people’s lives depend, reassigning say, Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, to be ambassador to Antarctica? Ha!

Will he publicly denounce and prohibit from participation the Halliburton profiteers whose mouths are watering at the thought of all the gold they can glean from the Katrina disaster? That will be the day.

Will he fall on his sword to uphold his honor? If only! Quick, find that man a sword! And while you’re at it, distribute swords to Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Chertoff….

How will we endure three more years of this corrupt, sleazy and dehumanizing administration?

Bush’s version of taking responsibility is a meaningless exercise in mollifying the press and his right wing critics. He does not give a fig about criticism from the left. Yet if anything should be beyond politics it should be the horrific spectacle of the demise of New Orleans as we knew it.

We will never again have the lives we had before Katrina. Bush will not be able to make things right with his weasel-worded apologies.

After the gathering of bodies and the draining of the city, there will be the funerals and the grief of the mourners as well as the despair of those whose loved ones cannot be found.

When the city has buried thousands of its residents, it will still face the loss of jobs and evacuation of its workforce, it will have to endure the razing of 160,000 homes, not to mention public buildings, stores and restaurants that gave the city its unique character.

Tulane University’s president says that it will reopen in the spring 2006 semester­but what about all the other colleges, universities, high schools, middle schools, elementary schools, kindergartens and Headstart programs whose budgets were already strained because of the abdication of fiscal responsibility of the federal government? How will they recover? Where will the money come from? Does Bush think that all the educators and students will forgive him because of his half-hearted assumption of blame?

More than 12,000 people over 62 years of age were residents of New Orleans. We have seen the pictures of bodies of the elderly casualties being carried out of the flooded nursing homes and hospitals. How many of the survivors will support the president or his party?

What about the 8,000 Vietnamese residents of New Orleans, half of whom have taken refuge in Houston? How long do you think they will vote for the GOP after this debacle?

15,000 Latinos lived in New Orleans according to the 2000 census. Not any more. And who will they blame? Furthermore, FEMA has decreed that it will not help displaced illegal immigrants. If they had any doubt about the heartlessness of the Republican party, this should erase any doubt. The undocumented workers cannot vote, but the Latino population has thousands who can.

The media showed heartbreaking pictures of throngs of African Americans begging for help. To TV viewers, the pictures looked like those from troubled Haiti or Darfur and conveyed the erroneous impression that all the displaced blacks were poor and unemployed but a thriving African American middle-class in New Orleans has been displaced as well. In recent years, the Republicans have been making a case for African Americans membership in their party by seeding their conventions with conservative black speakers and attendees, and selecting high-profile conservative blacks to key positions, such as Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court, and two in succession to the cabinet post of Secretary of State.

All of this may be for naught as black Louisianans confront the full force of the racism against them. The polls since the hurricane clearly show America’s blacks believe overwhelmingly that the government deliberately neglected Louisiana’s growing problem with its levees because New Orleans is 2/3 black.

Rap star Kanye West’s angry charge at the Concert for Hurricane Relief resounded in the black community and around the world. “I hate the way they portray us in the media. . .If you see a black family it says they are looting if you see a white family it says they are looking for food. George Bush doesn’t care about black people."

How, the world asked, could this happen in the richest country in the world?

Let me count the ways. First, you ignore the high rate of murder and suicide among young black men as well as the problems that cause those tragedies. Then you ignore the GOP’s desire to destroy affirmative action, Headstart and the Voting Rights Act. Then you ignore the depth of anti-black racism that starts with seemingly innocuous complaints like movie stars Danny Glover and Denzel Washington inability to get a cab to stop for them in Manhattan, goes on to the dearth of black college professors, doctors and lawyers; then on to the bulging files at fair housing organizations all over the country and the overpopulation of blacks on death rows and in prison populations, and ends with the random supremacist violence that continues to target blacks like the dragging-murder of James Byrd, Jr. in Jasper, Texas.

Don’t ask me how it could happen. You know very well how it does and so does George. If he really wants to take responsibility, there is plenty for him to do.

Dr. Rosa Maria Pegueros is a professor of Latin American History and Women's Studies at the University of Rhode Island. She may be reached at pegueros@uri.edu