The White House has also been forced to defend charges that the rescue effort would have been much quicker if New Orleans had not been a predominantly African-American city. On Friday, the head of the Congressional Black Caucus Elijah Cummings said it should not be “that the differences between those who live and those who die are poverty and skin color.” That same night one of the biggest names in hip-hop, Kanye West, appeared during a fundraiser on NBC. He broke from the pre-written script and said “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” NBC censored West’s comments from the West Coast broadcast of the telethon. ?On the following day, Condoleezza Rice — the Bush administration’s highest ranking African-American — said “I don’t believe for a minute anybody allowed people to suffer because they are African-Americans. I just don’t believe it for a minute.” She added: “Nobody, especially the president, would have left people unintended on the basis of race.”