A: we’re still counting.
The Constitution tells us one black man is 3/5 of a white man, so if you estimate 40,000 refugees in New Orleans (99% of whom are black), we have roughly the equivalent of 24,000 white refugees. The Constitution doesn’t draw distinctions between average whites and rich whites, but apparently the government does.
Now I’d love to blame Bush, I really would. And if the shoe fits…I mean this crap has “brought to you by the creators of post-war Iraq” written all over it, if you ask me. But the scale of ineptitude is simply beyond the power of one man, even the POTUS. I mean, I don’t think Bush could have mismanaged things this badly even if it was his goal to do so. It’s simply inconceivable these people are dying like this nearly five full days after the fact.
Tuesday, I thought, it’s a major disaster. It’s going to take a day or two to get in there.
Wednesday, I thought, it’s an unprecedented disaster. But I’m sure we’ll be all over it tomorrow.
Thursday, I thought, how can it be getting worse? How can there be helicopters flying all over the city just watching these people die? National Guard troops are in the city, all right; the victims can only wave to them as they drive by.
Here we are today, and it’s not any better. The absolute outrage of it is the spin coming from the President straight on down the line about how “magnificent” the relief effort is. I saw Senator Landrieu on CNN yesterday praising the then two-hour-old results of Presidents Clinton and Bush Sr., at which point Anderson Cooper commented that it was hard to listen to politicians slapping eachother on the back while he watched a woman’s corpse being eaten by rats. Landrieu didn’t even blink. A child of New Orleans, daughter of a former mayor–how can you *NOT BE OUTRAGED? *
So I’m watching the coverage, like everyone else, and I’m noticing the one overwhelming common denominator: all these people are black, probably mostly poor. A terrorist in Afghanistan sneezes, and within 24 hours we’re dropping pamphlets in Arabic with our response. A brain-dead woman in Florida gets her feeding tube removed and Congress convenes on a Sunday night to “save” her life. But we can’t drop food and water on New Orleans??! You’re telling me that Harry Connick, Jr. can DRIVE himself into downtown New Orleans but the military can’t?
I’m not sure which conclusion is worse: that our government is inherently inept or inherently racist. Four years after 9/11, after the efforts expended in Iraq, after the efforts expended after the tsunami, I’m forced to conclude that we simply don’t value poor black people enough to put ourselves in harm’s way to save them. “Well, you can’t save people while you’re being shot at” Really? Because I thought that happened in war all the time. Or are we simply waiting for them to just kill eachother off?
One thing I am sure of: the one thing the ENTIRE Federal government can do with complete co-ordination and consistency is LIE. They’re lying to us right now. You can’t look at the pictures and then listen to their words and not conclude that they aren’t lying. You can’t call it “spin;” you can’t even call it “malicious prevarication.” When it’s politician-vs-politician, it’s spin. When it’s politician vs. reality, policitian vs. helpless dying victims, it’s lying and we should recognize that.
And the world takes note: this is what it means to be poor and black in America. To be on a rooftop surrounded by rising water. To live in squalor and crime and be left to die. And the government says they’re doing the best they can. I can only echo a sentiment I heard yesterday: this isn’t my country. This isn’t my government. I’ve never been more ashamed to be an American.