Distaters in Colorado vs. New Orleans : Is this text racist or just right-wing rantin

Great Debates
21

[QUOTE=Renob]
The e-mail is crap for a lot of reasons. Racist? I don’t necessarily think so. In fact, I get tired of people who try and find racism in anything and everything. As you say, it does not mention black people or even the people of New Orleans. Why go about trying to find racism in it? I think your view that this is racist says a lot more about your prejudices and biases than the “racism” of whoever wrote this e-mail.
[/QUOTE]

How do you interpret this:
*
“In my many travels, I have noticed that once one gets north of about 48 degrees North Latitude, 90% of the world’s social problems evaporate.”
It does seem that way, at least to me."*

22

For comparison’s sake:

FEMA in Colorado (FEMA was called in yesterday)

FEMA in Louisiana

and for kicks (since Snopes pointed out that email was ripped from an earlier ND email):

FEMA in North Dakota (How soon some people forget the Red River flood of 1997)

While Louisiana did have many more calls for FEMA aid, I would argue that:

  1. Louisiana is a geographical location that is more topographically prone to more flooding where Colorado is not, due to the size of it’s uphill drainage basin, just as much as Colorado is more prone to avalanches than Louisiana due to it’s topographical/geographical location.
  2. Louisiana has more prescipitation than Colorado, considering that 1" rain is roughly 11" to 12" of snow. Imagine if Colorado got 12" of rain or the equivalent (12 Feet) of snow, along with 150 mph winds. Now that’s a better comparison!
  3. Cat 4+ Hurricanes have greater energy than blizzards.
  4. Comparing blizzards with hurricanes is apples and oranges. Each disaster has it’s own dangers and very few common dangers.
23

“no one looted” Ha!

A little tough to loot when you are under 4 feet of snow.

24

[QUOTE=Contrapuntal]
“no one looted” Ha!

A little tough to loot when you are under 4 feet of snow.
[/QUOTE]

In fact, the mailboxes in my complex were broken into. By a particularly dumb thief, as there had been no mail in three days.

25

[QUOTE=John Mace]
How do you interpret this:
*
“In my many travels, I have noticed that once one gets north of about 48 degrees North Latitude, 90% of the world’s social problems evaporate.”
It does seem that way, at least to me."*
[/QUOTE]

Which is interesting, because that pretty much puts you in Canada. The guy probably meant 38 deg.

26

[QUOTE=Renob]
As you say, it does not mention black people or even the people of New Orleans. Why go about trying to find racism in it?
[/QUOTE]

(bolding mine)

Forget about black people and the irrelevant mentioning of Jesse Jackson, affirmative action, and welfare, plus the bone-headed latitude thing. Are you saying that you can’t even tell the author is talking about the victims of Katrina?!?

What exactly do you need spelled out, here?

27

[QUOTE=John Mace]
Which is interesting, because that pretty much puts you in Canada. The guy probably meant 38 deg.
[/QUOTE]

He knew what he meant.

:slight_smile:

28

[QUOTE=John Mace]
Which is interesting, because that pretty much puts you in Canada. The guy probably meant 38 deg.
[/QUOTE]

No, what he meant was that those northwestern States with very low minority populations have no social problems. Which besides being false, is straightforwardly racist.

29

[QUOTE=threemae]
Well, I “lived” through that blizzard
[/QUOTE]

AAAHH! SNOW ZOMBIE!!

Anyhoo, this winter has been extraordinarily mild in my neighborhood. If this be global warming, bring it on.

30

[QUOTE=Valteron]
“In my many travels, I have noticed that once one gets north of about 48 degrees North Latitude, 90% of the world’s social problems evaporate.”

[/QUOTE]
Well, this is probably accurate – north of 48°N, at least 90% (probably more like 95%) of the human population is gone, so that’s not surprising. When you’re in the really sparsely-settled wide open northern regions, there aren’t a whole lot of social people to cause “social problems”. Like the Yukon, with one person per 16 km[sup]2[/sup]. (That’s about equivalent to the city of London with 96 people in it.)

You could even say that north of 10°N (in the North pole area), there are absolutely no social problems at all! At least, none between humans.

But I don’t think this is what the writer meant. I agree with others, this is pretty obviously a racist rant.

31

[QUOTE=Frank]
In fact, the mailboxes in my complex were broken into. By a particularly dumb thief, as there had been no mail in three days.
[/QUOTE]
Then maybe he was a vandal? If a mailbox in Denver gets broken into in July, is that looting? I sort of think of looting as smashing a window and grabbing a bunch of stuff and hauling it away. On a large scale. By alot of folks. One looter is really just a thief.

32

I seem to recall Garrison Keeler proposing that Minnesota start giving blizzards neat names so they attract more attention:
Blizzard Carl
Blizzard Barbara

The document posted in the OP is without merit.

33

[QUOTE=Paul in Saudi]
I seem to recall Garrison Keeler proposing that Minnesota start giving blizzards neat names so they attract more attention:
Blizzard Carl
Blizzard Barbara
[/QUOTE]
Ridiculous!
If we used names, it’d be ones like Ole, Lena, Sven, Olav, Thorvald, etc.
And if we did use Carl, we would of course spell it Karl.

34

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]

Anyhoo, this winter has been extraordinarily mild in my neighborhood. If this be global warming, bring it on.
[/QUOTE]
(emphasis by Valteron)

Yes, it is extremely mild here in eastern Canada as well. There is little or no snow on the ground today, Jan. 9 :confused:

A lot of Canadians are saying what you are saying, Bryan. And my answer to them is:

"Imagine that you take a mouse that is almost frozen outside and put it in a very cold oven and turn the control to 450 degrees. There will be a short period when the mouse will say “Hey, this is pretty good!”

35

I’m a New Orleans native, and I had my family evacuate to me here in Baton Rouge for Katrina. My mother’s house was damaged and she’s still struggling with various programs to get it repaired. I work in state government and have friends working for the legislature and for hurricane prevention science groups at LSU. I live this stuff daily.

I can’t tell you how it sickens me to know that racists and ignorant assholes of whatever stripe have latched onto this incredibly complex ONGOING struggle as something to point to as proof of their twisted beliefs. I realize how ridiculous it is to get insulted about it, but my attitude is one of outrage. How dare they? How dare they take such a huge, life-changing, complicated tragedy and use it for their own simple-minded hatred? How dare they piss on the ruins of my city like this, the fuckers!

36

[QUOTE=t-bonham@scc.net]
Well, this is probably accurate – north of 48°N, at least 90% (probably more like 95%) of the human population is gone, so that’s not surprising. When you’re in the really sparsely-settled wide open northern regions, there aren’t a whole lot of social people to cause “social problems”.
[/QUOTE]

Your idea that north or 48°N is sparesely populated, and that as a result there would be no social problems, is a bit of a sweeping generlization.

I don’t know if you mean north of the 48th in North America, or the world.

If you mean the world, then people north of 48°N would include all of Scandinavia, the Brisitsh Isles, the Benelux countries, most Frenchmen, most Germans, Poland, and almost all Russians and Siberia. Not exactly a small population. I don’t know if that isn’t more than 5% of the world’s population.

If you mean only in North America, the number of people living in Canada’s four western provinces and three territories plus Americans in Alaska probably totals something like 10 million people, making them only about 2% or less of the people in NA (Mexico, Cuba, and Central America are actually part of NA.)

But that does not change the fact that cities like Vancouver, an urban area of a couple of million, have enormous drug and crime problems. Winnipeg, Calgary, and Edmonton are all cities of 500,000 to a million with all the social problems of urban areas.

Don’t let Nelson Eddy and Rosemarie fool you. Pristine wilderness be damned. The vast majority of Canadians live in urban areas with traffic jams, crime and all the other fun stuff that comes with urbanization.

And even when you get to the sparsely populated northern Canada, there are enormous problems with alcoholism and the crimes that come from drunkenness. Teenagers in Canada’s north often turn to gasoline-sniffing and worse.

You are right that social problems may disappear if you go far enough, but it would have to be the north pole where there are no human inhabitants, ergo, no social problems :smiley:

37

[QUOTE=lisacurl]
I’m a New Orleans native, and I had my family evacuate to me here in Baton Rouge for Katrina. My mother’s house was damaged and she’s still struggling with various programs to get it repaired. I work in state government and have friends working for the legislature and for hurricane prevention science groups at LSU. I live this stuff daily.

I can’t tell you how it sickens me to know that racists and ignorant assholes of whatever stripe have latched onto this incredibly complex ONGOING struggle as something to point to as proof of their twisted beliefs. I realize how ridiculous it is to get insulted about it, but my attitude is one of outrage. How dare they? How dare they take such a huge, life-changing, complicated tragedy and use it for their own simple-minded hatred? How dare they piss on the ruins of my city like this, the fuckers!
[/QUOTE]

I understand how angry you feel, Lisacurl. The author of that piece either intended to write a basically racist message “between the lines” or else he is incredibly naive. But since we can’t prove it, and since we can’t “convict” without reasonable doubt, let’s drop the racism charge.

The fact remains that this is an incredibly stupid, inaccurate and insensitive piece that makes light of terrible suffering just to advance a right-wing myth that “good” people depend on themselves and “lazy, bad” people depend on the evil govetrnment whose social programs are just a trade-off of votes for sending government cheques to do-nothings.

You will be happy to know that this friend of mine who sent this emial around has since agreed to send around a rebuttal I composed using the excellent information I got from this site.

Funny isn’t it how some people on the conservative right have no problem with huge tax cuts for the rich and multi-billion dollar expenditures of our tax dollars to invade and control Iraq, but if a poor person in distress calls for a few lousy bucks in a moment of great need, they come down on their heads with their jack boots!

38

[QUOTE=Valteron]
But since we can’t prove it, and since we can’t “convict” without reasonable doubt, let’s drop the racism charge.

QUOTE]
:smack: Sorry, I meant to say, we can’t convict if there is reasonable doubt.

39

Others have shredded this argument as thoroughly as anyone could wish. I’ll just point out one additional thing regarding the first claim, in '05, comparing Louisiana to North Dakota. Someone ought to inform the author that at least until very recently North Dakotans got the most federal handouts of any state (as compared to the tax dollars they pay). It just goes to show that right-wing nuts not only are wrong, but they have a unique talent for being as wrong as they can possibly be.

40

[QUOTE=threemae]
Oh yeah, and I should add, I’m still complaining about Denver’s complete fucking inability to plow or at least salt even some semi-major side streets. All over Denver there are streets with six inch deep ice on the roads that has been rutted out to the pavement. God forbid you get a tire out of those ruts, you’ll be stuck until someone tows you out.
[/QUOTE]
My parents are in Fort Collins and apparently only the mile grid is plowed by the city. The city is concerned that they didn’t have the budget for this much snow removal, so perhaps they will request aid after all.