Bush, the second, tells us that of all the issues he had to deal with during his two terms as President of the U.S. overseeing the collapse of Wall Street, as Commander-in-Chief over two wars, he was �hurt� over Kanye West�s statement: �George Bush doesn�t care about Black people.�

George Bush and his administration waited how many days while predominantly Black residents of New Orleans waved signs atop roof tops begging for help? Surrounded by the flood waters caused by a breach of the Pontchartrain, levees after hurricane Katrina reached the Gulf Shore, predominantly Black residents, those unable to evacuate the city, those trapped in hospital wards and in the Superdome without water and food, those battling the heat and sun and the water engulfing their homes. They were the spectacle of a catastrophe seen around the world.

Where was George Bush, ruler of the Free World? We know Condoleezza Rice, a daughter of Birmingham, Alabama and friend of one of the four girls killed in the dynamited Birmingham church in 1963 - went shopping for Italian shoes.

Bush flew over in Air Force One. He was heartbroken. The stranded and desperate were in good hands with FEMA�s Michael Brown.

Now, Bush tells us West�s statement was hurtful. West called him a racist. Imagine that. He, Bush - a racist! Why, had not he proved his love for Black people, his love for Arabs and Muslims, his love for Brown citizens?!

Kayne West ought to be ashamed of himself! (The American public should be outraged, again!). On the other hand, Bush has nothing to be ashamed of - not even ordering water boarding! Yeah, I did that! So?

�Nobody wants to be called a racist, if in your heart you believe in the equality of race.�

(Let me sell my book without the trouble My former partner-in-crime, Tony Blair, is experiencing with rowdy crowds of dissidents throwing shoes, forcing him to cancel book-signing engagements. Focus, my fellow Americans, on that rude and hurtful Black man - Kanye West!).

Then the headlines read: Bush forgives Kanye West! The latter, who did not water board anyone, did not invade a nation on the basis of a lie, did not begin the dropping of drones over Pakistan, did not leave stranded thousands of U.S. citizens after Katrina, and did not defend and grant bailout money to the swindlers of Wall Street back peddles:

I would tell George Bush: In my moment of frustration, I didn't have the grounds to call him a racist�I believe that in a situation of high emotion like that, we as human beings don't always choose the right words.

But was West referring to Black people in his original statement or Kanye West?

You are forgiven, Bush responds. This acceptance of an apology of sorts is coming from a man peddling what many in Europe, at least, are calling a book of crimes. I hesitate to write �a crime novel� - although I am sure George Bush made George Bush the hero of his chronicle of those 8 years of Bushism.

The group that by leaps and bounds joined their men folk in the workforce, in academia, in business, in politics, in the media, in civic leadership positions as a result of that unfair and discriminatory Affirmative Action legislation are not hesitant when they feel the need to call out sexist men, �chauvinists pigs,� �jerks,� �creeps.�

They form organizations and receive grant funding regularly to fight discrimination against women by institutions. Yet, Brown women in this country have revealed how they have worked in the homes (familial institutions) of these women for slave wages. These Brown women are chased from the workplace to home to deportation centers and put aboard planes and sent back to Mexico or Haiti or Ecuador - and what are the Hilary Clintons and Sarah Palins and others like her to say about this travesty against women?

Black women are lucky to have a job in the U.S. in this year - 2010. Most of those with jobs are certainly not paid even equivalent to this privileged group who benefited from Affirmative Action. The jobs, if these Black women have them, are the low-visibility jobs as security guards, guarding the very institutions often that assume these women are rightly placed in the lobby rather than the top floors.

Can we call out RACISM?

Some times we fail to remember who is running ahead by miles and favorable rules and who is lagging farther and farther behind thanks to unfavorable rules. We fail to remember that the reality of these two groups is different because one is in control of the show. One group determines what becomes of the other. One group dominates even if members of the other group sit at the lunch counter with members of the one group or even if a member of the one group takes a seat on the bus and rides all the way downtown, hand-in-hand with a member of the other group.

We are not talking about a matter of the �private �unconscious�� when we examine writer, thinker and professor at the European Graduate School, Slavoj Zizek, (In Defense of Lost Causes) the function of institutions. It is not a matter of the �private �unconscious� of individuals, but rather of the �unconscious� of the institution itself.� It is �an inherent part of the way the institution reproduces itself.�

These institutions, then, writes Zizek, reproduce �a set of presuppositions and exclusions implied by the public discourse.�

What might that �public discourse� be these days when institutions answer to the �Big Other� - capitalist corporations?

What might that �public discourse� be as it relates to racism as opposed to sexism?

It is less a matter of that individual named �George Bush� and whether or not he is or is not a racist. But what of the U.S. Empire and all of its institutions and, in turn, their policies (�presuppositions and exclusions�) concealed in the rhetoric of this post-racial era? George Bush�s administration, the institution in its charge, did not care about Black people. But what administration did? Has the �public discourse� surrounding racism altered to effect a change in the way the current U.S. administration responds to Black people?

Or is the �Big Other� still in play more than ever?

The Catholic Church�s pedophilia scandal for the press is but �a phenomenon that is inscribed into the very functioning of the Church as a socio-symbolic institution.� In Zizek�s words, institutions systematically create �the conditions for such crimes to take place.�

The crime of racism as it manifest itself in the discriminatory high rate of Black, Brown, and Red incarceration rates, or the high unemployment rate among people of color in the U.S., or the children of Black, Brown, and Red left behind by educational institutions to wallow in despair and fill the prisons or low-paying positions is as real as bombs and drones falling over cities and villages in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Just as anti-Semitism is not an ideology in Western societies �displayed by the deranged� lone figure, Zizek suggests, of a Mel Gibson, racism, in general, is �an ingredient of spontaneous ideological attitudes of perfectly sane people, of our ideological sanity itself.

The spectacle of Bush and West is but the sanity of white supremacy. But who is allowed to speak of this crime in this manner? It is one guy telling us he was hurt by another, and the other apologizes. Yet, the U.S. government refuses to consider reparations for Black Americans or apologize to the thousands of victims of Katrina still suffering today or to the thousands of Iraqis, Afghanis, and Pakistanis who have had their lives turned upside down by a very sane ideology of American exceptionalism.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has a Doctorate in Modern American Literature/Cultural Theory. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.