HOUSTON -- Leonard Parker sat on his cot in the Reliant Astrodome surrounded by thousands of people who'd made the same horrific journey from New Orleans. Parker looked over what seemed to be a sea of brown faces and said, "I'm not prejudiced or anything, but where are the white people?"

In televised reports and newspaper photographs, the face of the victims of Hurricane Katrina have become the faces at the bottom of America's well -- the poor, black and disabled. And the references to this dispossessed lot as looters or bare-footed refugees in their own homeland has taken the United States to a place it would rather not go -- to the heart of a different storm that has roiled the nation since its birth. It is a storm of race and class.

In Houston, one city has joined another. There are 16,000 New Orleans evacuees at the Reliant Astrodome, 4,000 in the Reliant Center, 4,000 in the Reliant Arena and 950 at the George R. Brown Convention Center. That's nearly 25,000 people who have traded one urban center for another -- and for many, "urban" is a code word for black. It is mostly black people milling in and around the Astrodome, sitting on the sidewalks, begging for money at the intersections, walking to and fro in the parking lot.

By no means are all the victims of Hurricane Katrina African-American, but the indelible television images of mostly black people living in subhuman conditions for nearly a week have prompted some to ask whether race played a role in how quickly or how not-so-quickly federal and state agencies responded in its aftermath.

Jesse Leal, a 27-year-old Hispanic man from Houston who was handing out cold water to evacuees outside the Astrodome yesterday harbors no doubt.

"I believe [race] had a lot to do with it," he said. "It seemed like it took way, way too long. I don't see why they couldn't react faster."

Like Leal, Houston school administrator Tarhonda Greer and her best friend Zina Hereford were volunteering to help the involuntary migrants from New Orleans. The two black women were looking for family members who'd been split up, some living in a shelter in Fort Worth, others at the Astrodome. Asked why they felt the government response time wasn't quicker, Hereford replied, "Because these are black poor folk."

"Even as we stand here now," Greer said, "you only see a sprinkling of another race. I feel that they were not prepared, but the response itself was extra slow due to the ethnicity of the people that were devastated."

Hereford said New Orleans officials managed to make it to safety and yet none came to Houston to offer assurance to the first wave of evacuees arriving here.

"When 911 hit, you saw congressmen, city councilmen within the next day. They were out there rallying and giving support," Hereford said.

Lucien Teddy Fortune does not want to pass judgment. He had come to the Astrodome to pick up his brother, Lloyd Fortune, and his companion, Gail Egano. The Fortunes are black. Egano is white. Lucien Teddy Fortune had got out of New Orleans ahead of the storm. The couple had not.

"From Baton Rouge to here, I met some of the nicest white folks to take care of people," Lucien Teddy Fortune said. "I never had white folks do me wrong."

Lloyd Fortune did not want to lay down the race card, either. "I think it is always easy for someone to play that ace when they need to," Lloyd Fortune said. "The poor aren't just one color. Thee are different races at each level."

He and Egano reside in what they described as the racially mixed St. Bernard Parish.

"Everybody seemed to get along," Egano said. "There was no problem there with blacks or whites."

Lloyd Fortune, 55, said his main concern while waiting to be evacuated was keeping himself and Egano safe. They had spent several days sleeping on the ground under a bridge before getting on a bus for Houston. Their house and car were paid for.

"Now we don't have anything," said Egano, who was not working and was set to officially begin her retirement in January. The 61-year-old white woman had questions other than race and response time to ponder.

"Everything was just the way we liked it," she said. "After all these years, I don't know where to go. I don't know what to do really."

Egano said she preferred the energy-draining humidity of the parking lot to the bustling mini-city that is the Astrodome.

"When I'm in there, I feel funny cause they're looking at me as if to say you're to blame," she said. "But I'm just like you; I lost everything, too."

Nancy Williams, a white volunteer who came to check on the couple as they waited in the parking lot, said she was surprised when she arrived at the Astrodome that the majority of its new residents were black. But she said class, not race, was much more of a factor in the timing of relief efforts.

"I think they did the best they could," Williams said. "I think they were overwhelmed. They have to learn from what happened and do better next time."

Zeke Cervantez, another Houston native, attracted a crowd as he handed out free snacks from a shopping cart. Like some others, he said race played some role in the response to Hurricane Katrina.

"It was more black people than anything else," said the 36-year-old Hispanic man. "If it was anywhere else, [relief efforts] would have been a lot quicker."

Far away in Pennsylvania, Stephen Thomas, head of the Center for Minority Health at the University of Pittsburgh, was watching television at home.

"To the best of my memory, I've never heard Americans referred to as a refugee. To see the overwhelming blackness of the humans and people being moved, and to call them 'refugee' is to designate them as if they're some overwhelming 'otherness,'" he said. "Race still matters and I've never seen it more blatant than exposed by this act of nature."

In New Orleans, many of the worst hit neighborhoods were among the poorest and blackest.

"I would think that any disaster preparedness center would address the needs of those who are most vulnerable," Thomas said. "That was not the case here."

Thomas said the lack of evacuation procedures for the poor and the slow response in the aftermath of Katrina "made a mockery of our ideals. How we take care of the poor and dispossessed that's the measure of a nation. It's not how we treat the millionaires, but how we treat the poor. I'm very disturbed."

Esther Bush, head of the Pittsburgh Urban League, had cousins and other family members displaced by Katrina.

"We should be ashamed and embarrassed by the United States," said Bush, referring to the delays in response by federal disaster teams and national relief organizations. "This disaster makes us question equal opportunity and fair treatment. Seeing those images of black people waiting on rooftops and others dying in the streets, and dying on the cots next to you is 100 percent incomprehensible."

The situation was worsened by class divisions and health disparities, said Bush, who recalled seeing rescue helicopters pluck stranded guests from hotel rooftops while leaving disabled and poor hospital patients for later.

Bush did note a potential upside to what's happened in the aftermath of Katrina: "I hope this major tragedy provides an opportunity to talk about race and remedies and gives us permission to make change."