You don’t have to believe this poll if you don’t want to, but you would be naïve to deny it. The trouble is, it unveils a huge problem for which no one has a solution.

Well over half – six in ten – African Americans say they believe the fact that the majority of the people stranded in New Orleans were poor and black caused the federal response to the disaster to be slow, while nine out of 10 whites said those factors played no part.  That’s the finding of a CNN/USA Today survey of 262 blacks and 848 whites.

Even though race relations in the United States have improved dramatically in the past 50 years, there remains a grand canyon between the perceptions held by the two races.

This much is true and indisputable. Race and poverty either did or did not affect the federal reaction to Hurricane Katrina. It is impossible that both perceptions can be true or even partly true. This is a yes or no question. There is a huge chasm between the opinions held by blacks and whites on the question, and the two groups can’t both be right or even partly right. One is right and one is wrong.

Either 90 percent of whites are wrong about the question or 60 percent of blacks are wrong. Can you grasp the weight of that fact? It’s monumental.

Right and wrong don’t shape policy in this country. Policy is shaped by perception. When perception is not in line with the facts, then coherent policy is impossible. When racial differences lead to vastly different perceptions, then racial differences prevent coherent policy. The person who figures out a way to close that race perception gap will be a genius deserving of a Nobel Prize for Race Relations.

Go Phish

There is rarely a day go by that I don’t get at least one very official looking email from what appears to be a bank or other institution, admonishing me to update my account information or risk some unfortunate consequence.

You probably get them too. If you have done what they ask, you should probably cancel your credit cards and apply for new ones.  You have been caught by a phisher – a thief that “phishes” for credit card information with bogus emails.

Victims of phishing scams are fooled by realistic-looking e-mails that appear to come from (mostly) banks or other financial institutions. I’ve also received them from someone pretending to be eBay. The urgent-looking messages direct recipients to verify their accounts by typing personal details — credit card information, for example — into a Web site disguised to appear legitimate.