|
|
|
marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
 Posted - 09/08/2005 : 12:34:30 [Permalink]
|
Valliant Dance wrote: It can't be both because the predominately white population in the surrounding areas are suffering the same kind of delays and the same kind of hardships. If it was race alone, the white population would have recieved help first. They have not.
Again, I think this is a simplification of the idea of racism. Because racism has fallen way out of popularity with the mainstream you aren't going to see a lot of blatent examples of it in the media, especially related to high political officials. For instance, after the OJ Simpson trial, people all over the country said "See, it's not racism. It's classism." But look at studies on the other end of the economic spectrum. Poor black kids in Florida are three times more likely to be recommended for trial as adults than poor white kids who committed identical crimes. Poor blacks in general are sentences more harshly for the same crimes as poor whites.
Also, if you want to see the extreme racism resulting from the Katrina disaster, a brief web search will comes up with plenty of things like this:
http://www.whitecivilrights.com/
http://nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=5987
http://www.resist.com/
http://www.cofcc.org/
Now of course many of you are thinking, "That doens't count. People like David Duke are nutters. They don't reflect the general culture." But it is absurd to think there is zero gradation between a member of the White Aryan Resistance and someone with no racial prejudices. Plenty of people are looking at this situation in New Orleans and hearing about rapes and lootings and shootings and in the back of their minds - though they'd never say it out loud in certain company - those people.
More moderately, do statements like this, from "American Spectator", relate not at all to race issues in America?
Why are police officers behaving like criminals? Well, because PC police departments like the NOPD hire them. Aggressive, let's-just-meet-the-quota-style affirmative action has become the door through which criminals enter the police academy. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
|
| Edited by - marfknox on 09/08/2005 12:37:09 |
 |
|
|
beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 09/08/2005 : 12:52:13 [Permalink]
|
Dude, I don't think the magnitude is greater in New Orleans, only the shape. In one case you have miles and miles of coastline with completely shattered buildings. In the other area you have a large downtown that is now a lake. The news media has concentrated on New Orleans because it's easier to make a story out of mobs of people stuck in the Convention Center than miles of devastation that once you've seen a news reel or two of all looks the same.
We don't have a general prejudice that Asians are thieves and criminals so were the population Asian rather than black you'd expect different biases to show up.
My observations of this world, this country, and this situation are that we are talking covert and sub-surface prejudice here. Yes there are poor white people also in need of aid that haven't gotten any either. But the overall response and the overall news coverage contains lots of subtle bias that is not merely coincidence.
Robb, there is clearly an incredible amount of incompetence. Just as there are class issues. This is not one or the other. Those things are in there with race issues and all three are making for a totally awful situation.
If I had to rate the significance of each I would put incompetence at the top. I would put class and race perhaps on par with each other. It's very hard to separate those two out and say which is causing what. They are intertwined.
Poor folks don't present themselves well when a reporter asks someone with boxes of shoes why that is survival and not looting. But lots and lots of poor people are truly generous with what little they have and may very well have taken shoes to pass out to those in need. |
|
|
|
pleco
SFN Addict
USA
2998 Posts |
Posted - 09/08/2005 : 13:19:21 [Permalink]
|
quote:
Poor folks don't present themselves well when a reporter asks someone with boxes of shoes why that is survival and not looting. But lots and lots of poor people are truly generous with what little they have and may very well have taken shoes to pass out to those in need.
I saw on CNN the other night where a group of "refugees" stuck at the Convention Center had taken (looted, whatever) food from grocery stores and setup and mini soup kitchen. They were cooking the food and handing it out to the other refugees. I thought that was pretty damn cool. |
by Filthy
The neo-con methane machine will soon be running at full fart. |
|
|
|
|
Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 09/08/2005 : 14:18:00 [Permalink]
|
quote:
Dude, I don't think the magnitude is greater in New Orleans, only the shape. In one case you have miles and miles of coastline with completely shattered buildings. In the other area you have a large downtown that is now a lake. The news media has concentrated on New Orleans because it's easier to make a story out of mobs of people stuck in the Convention Center than miles of devastation that once you've seen a news reel or two of all looks the same.
It is, for several reasons. Its a major urban center, it is STILL mostly under water, the logistics of moving people out and relief supplies in is far more difficult.
The Mississippi coast, while flat, doesn't compare.
|
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
|
|
|
|
beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 09/08/2005 : 22:50:31 [Permalink]
|
quote:
Originally posted by Dude
quote:
Dude, I don't think the magnitude is greater in New Orleans, only the shape. In one case you have miles and miles of coastline with completely shattered buildings. In the other area you have a large downtown that is now a lake. The news media has concentrated on New Orleans because it's easier to make a story out of mobs of people stuck in the Convention Center than miles of devastation that once you've seen a news reel or two of all looks the same.
It is, for several reasons. Its a major urban center, it is STILL mostly under water, the logistics of moving people out and relief supplies in is far more difficult.
The Mississippi coast, while flat, doesn't compare.
Just how many miles of that coast were flattened? Have you heard? How big was the population affected? How many are dead yet still not recovered because no one has begun digging in the rubble?
At this point I was under the impression it was a very wide storm and a very wide area was hit with a 20-30 ft storm surge. |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Topic Locked
