The multitude of anguished black faces telecast from New Orleans has stirred a national discussion.

The central questions seem to be: Why are most of Hurricane Katrina's victims black, and does the color of their skin have any bearing on the perceived slow response by authorities?

"Black people are mad because they feel the reason for the slow response is because those people are black and they didn't support George Bush," said Ron Walters, a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland.

In a radio interview broadcast Friday over hundreds of stations, Dr. Beverly Wright, director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at Xavier University in New Orleans, agreed:

"I am very angry, and I really, really believe that [the crisis] is driven by race. People can say what they want, but when you look at who is left behind, it is very disturbing to me."

Wright was referring to the thousands of predominantly lower-income blacks still stranded inside New Orleans. Media images have been dominated by scenes of dead, dying and crying blacks, their desperation and pleas for help sometimes interlaced with anger.

News reports also have described looters and armed gangs. There have been sporadic shootings and physical confrontations among the stranded. The violence — and the fear of it — slowed efforts to bring aid to the neediest parts of the city.

New Orleans is one of the poorest, blackest large cities in the United States. Its population is more than 66 percent African American, about half of whom live below the poverty line. Most middle-class blacks, like most white residents, were able to leave the city.

Sociologist Robert Bullard, director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, is eight months into leading a project examining the ways the public response to every manner of disaster treats blacks poorly.

From emancipation, blacks were more likely to live in the bottoms and whites in the highlands. When waters are nibbling white toes, black folks already are treading water.

But if blacks typically have more reason to leave, they are less able or willing to evacuate. Evacuation, if you don't have a car, a credit card or a place to go, sounds like trading the deep sea you know for the devil you don't.

According to Bullard, while more than 90 percent of white adults own a car, one-third of blacks are without wheels, and in poor neighborhoods, more than half are carless. Nationally, he said, nearly two-thirds of those riding mass transit are people of color.

New Orleans had the makings, with Katrina, of a perfect racial storm, seeded as well by the provocative televised images of black looting and violence.

"People may think I am racializing this, but how can you not?" Bullard said.

Some say the hurricane has exposed the racial fault line that exists between blacks and whites in America.

In general, whites tend to see the situation one way, blacks another, said David Wellman, sociology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and co-author of the 1993 book: "White-washing Race: The Myth of a Color-blind Society" (University of California Press).

"Many whites will focus on the lawlessness of what's going on in New Orleans," Wellman said. "Many blacks will focus on the desperation of the victims, the fact that they're being neglected and ignored."

Wellman said the racial fault line operates in the same way as a geological fault line: "They're invisible until there's an earthquake."

He said the racial divide is evidenced by studies that show 65 percent of white Americans do not believe that racial discrimination exists, while 75 percent of black Americans believe it does.

Ward Connerly, chairman of the conservative think tank American Civil Rights Institute, in Sacramento, Calif., said it simply is a matter of coincidence that most of the hurricane victims on television are black. Connerly said the hurricane happened to hit New Orleans, which happens to be predominantly black and poor.

"I wish we were not talking about race at all. It's a needless distraction," he said. "We all ought to be praying and crying about the people whose lives have been totally ripped asunder. Those who are misbehaving are doing it out of desperation. It just so happens those who are doing it are black, but the city of New Orleans has a lot of black people."

Connerly said he was disappointed with those African-American leaders and whites who are accusing the government of being lackadaisical in its response. The underlying charge is that the sluggish response is because of racism.

"The people accusing the government of racism are looking for someone to blame. They can't blame God, so they're going to blame the government or the president. Or racism," Connerly said. "So many blacks have been conditioned to view everything through the prism of race that it's easy to come to that conclusion. But for the black leaders who are blaming racism, shame on them."

Damu Smith, executive director of the National Black Environmental Justice Network, said on a Friday broadcast of "Democracy Now!" radio program that this is the exact time to point fingers — while the attention of the nation is fixed on the issue.

Smith avoided the word "racism" during the program but implied state and federal policy decisions opened the way for catastrophe to reach the lives of the region's poorest people.

"I want to focus on the federal assets because that's what was needed to be brought to bear in this situation, and they were not brought to bear. So mostly the poor and black poverty-stricken people of New Orleans and Louisiana and Mississippi are paying the price for our government's neglect," she said.

One Internet blogger, John Bambenek, said in a Friday entry in blogcritics.org that accusing government officials of racism or incompetence steers the search for true answers in the wrong direction. The real blame, he said, lies in something as mundane as bureaucratic ineptitude.

"Kyoto had nothing to with this. Racism had nothing to do with this. Iraq had nothing to do with this. Federal spending had nothing to do with this," Bambenek wrote. "Poor and/or nonexistent planning and poor execution had everything to do with this."

Walters' comments were reported by Newhouse News Service.