" Images of seas of black faces begging for help that took days to arrive, and stories of sheriffs from adjacent white suburbs turning desperate evacuees away at gunpoint as they tried to flee New Orleans, horrified the nation."
What absolute nonsense. FEMA took 7 days to arrive, just as it ALWAYS has, for every disaster it's ever attended, including to assist rich crackers in Florida. The sheriffs turning away "desperate evacuees" acted only in response to earlier refugees pillaging these towns and overwhelming their services with massive breakins and looting. These "white suburbs" contain large fractions of blacks, including city council members who voted in favor of blocking further refugess from entering. Included amoungst those blocked refugees: white tourist honkies from the pricey French Quarter hotels.
What about "images of seas of WHITE faces begging for help that took days to arrive" in OTHER cities? Did no such images exist, or did news outlets choose not to display them? FEMA took its customary 7 days to arrive to New Orleans, but took EVEN LONGER to arrive to many other cities along the Gulf Coast.
It only takes logic and a consideration of the facts to reveal clearly that racism played no role in Katrina. If you were a racist white person, would you choose THIS as a mechanism for visiting suppression upon blacks? Have your own businesses and homes destroyed, black thugs rampaging around further destroying your property, plus immessurably more demands placed on your social services?
The white and black city, county, and state leaders in this area failed to ensure that the levees protecting their wealth were adaquate. Leaders in Alaska were able to bilk the US treasury for a worthless "Bridge to Nowhere", but the black and white leaders of southern Louisiana -- business and political -- simply made bad choices over the past decades, and all of them -- rich and poor, black and white -- paid steep prices for this incompetence.
2006-08-24
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/23/dining/23orleans.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&oref=slogin
Here's a black restaurant a block or so north of the French Quarter, in a black neighborhood (the first "black neighborhood" in the US, in fact). "When the city was evacuated, people broke into the 200-seat restaurant and took all the liquor, the payroll, the cash registers — everything but her art collection." How much of the crisis stemmed from such unneccessary behavior, such poor choices of individuals? One thing we know that resulted from this behavior: armed police across the river blocked more refugees from exiting into their cities, in response to devistation caused by earlier refugees.
You're such an apologist for all the racists of America. What a good Southerner you've become!
Not all of the difficulties of Katrina can be blamed on racism, of course, but there are enough of them that can for you not to give a blanket pass to every Southerner.
And no, I don't excuse looters who stole tvs or dvd players, though those stores were going to write off those losses anyway because of the storm. They will receive every penny back, which is not the case for so many poor people who lost their homes and received no help from the criminal insurance industry.
Nadir: All you can do is label me a racist; you cannot justify your labeling, though. Please specify what "difficulties of Katrina can be blamed on racism."
And who are "Southerners"? A huge fraction are black, and they have it so well there that they are tripping over each other to return to live there, demonstrating the amazing change since the days when blacks -- and whites! -- fled it.
The looters placed an enormous burden on the civic officials, including police. Store owners certainly didn't view their inventory as something that would merely get "written off", since so many stayed behind to defend their property.
With people behaving this way, business has fled. I believe that 100% of all ATM machines were 100% destroyed, to cite just one of many statistics documenting unneccessary devistations that SOMEBODY has to pay for.
I await you justifying your claims of racism here.
Again, not all instances of problems in Katrina can be labeled racist. The water flowed where gravity and physics let it.
The lack of urgency in the response of the president was probably classist rather than racist. Or perhaps he was just self-absorbed in his vacation. Perhaps he is just incompetent.
Certainly Nagin's choice to consult with business leaders first was a classist act.
I will admit that many of the inferences of racism are speculative because no one will ever admit that they acted slowly or blocked poor people on a bridge or shot looters because they were Black. So racists are smart enough to deny that they are racist 40 years after the Civil Rights Act.
The Yahoo news labeling of looters was inadvertantly racist. Attitudes that people (Black and white) had about looting was racially motivated.
Nadir: The email we all got juxtaposing the white non-looter with the black looter was not racist in any way. The white guy was carrying basic food stuffs, whereas the black guy was carrying DVD players. Black-owned businesses in non-flooded areas got devistated by looters, such as the owner of that revered restaurant just north of the French Quarter, who got all of her liquor, cash registers, and furnature stolen. I doubt that she would have been any less likely than a cracker to shoot or otherwise defend her property against these animals, regardless of their "racial" classification.
The police blockade against NOLA refugees crossing over the bridges contained zero racism, as the facts conclusively prove:
- Those communities welcomed and accomidated NOLA refugees, until massive looting by some fraction of them overwhelmed police.
- Black residents of those areas, including city council members, 100% backed the NOLA refugee blockade.
- The blocaded NOLA refugees included whites, including visitors from tourist hotels. The blockading police made no exceptions.
Even wealthy white racists would not want poor blacks stuck in a flooded city which contained their businesses and homes. The economic needs of even wealthy white racists to accomidate and pacify poor flooded blacks in their city is limitless, including:
- The awful, counter-productive international image of a city with businesses uniquely dependant upon an international image of fun and cheerfulness.
- The businesses themselves, which, counter to your Kramer-on-Seinfield view of insurance -- wherein a magic wand simply "writes it off" -- are harmed directly by hordes of thugs on rampage. I took a trolly ride north from the French Quarter in June, about 5 miles or so, through non-flooded highlands. One point of that excursion was to obtain cash to pay for my Bed-and-Breakfast. An internet search revealed that stretch of road to contain a rich line of banks with ATM machines. Nadir, EVERY ATM MACHINE (***EVERY ONE***!!!) was demolished, ripped open, gutted. All the businesses displayed evidence of human-imposed devistation. That was months after Katrina. The magic wand of "insurance" has not, and cannot, wipe away such devistation.
The wealthiest people in NOLA, black and white (including even any anti-black racists) had their own selfish interests in quickly addressing and resolving all the human suffering, which expressed itself both as deplorable, anti-tourism images as well as devistating destruction by rampaging thugs. White and black businesses have not yet recovered from either of these massive hits on their interests, nor from the massive flood damage caused by the failure of whomever to design, erect, and maintain a proper levee system.
Speaking of which, racism and even classism cannot explain the failure of NOLA to have such a levee system. Even hypothetical anti-black racists, and selfish greedheads, had their own self-interest in preventing a NOLA flood.
Furthermore, FEMA appeared in its cusomary 7 days, just as it ALWAYS does, in NOLA, and few have bothered to note that FEMA concentrated its efforts on NOLA to the neglect of many other areas along the coast that suffered damage, including affuent and impoverished white areas.
I do not claim that Bush did a great job, though I do claim that his responsibility lies low on the list. I am disgusted that he did not recognize along with the rest of the world that a crisis had appeared, regardless of the fact that he bore no responsibility in the mannifestation of that crisis. When all the local leaders in and around NOLA appeard to have failed to obtained proper levees in the long term, and in the short term failed to effectivley first plan for this partcicular disaster and failed to respond effectively to it, Bush did have special powers to address the situation. I was shocked and disappointed to learn first that FEMA never arrives before 7 days, and that Bush did not immediately get in there with all our fancy and expensive resources within 24 hours of the world deciding via cable news that a major crises had materialized within the USA. I think that Bush should have immediately had himself transported to that dreadful Superdome and announced that he would be "the last man out", and that in the meantime he would eat the same food and use the same facilities as everyone else.
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