This is just one of several reports on the inevitable people who are refusing to be evacuated from NOLA. Right now, the front page of Drudge has a photo of a guy flopped out in his living room…which is knee-deep in water. Also saw a report on CNN with footage of a guy who was paddling around on a tire and cheerfully refused rescue, because this was where he lived, and another guy who stood on his front porch berating the rescue crew, asking when the pumps were going to be turned back on.
Now, there’s been a lot of talk about black people this, black people that. But these people, the ones who won’t leave, seem to be mostly white. And that doesn’t surprise me. Because I was wondering if we were ever going to hear about the hicks. The fact is, black people are pretty much everywhere in America, even if some states don’t have much representation. There is a certain amount of the “us vs. them” mentality that’s been cited in other threads, but people do know that black people exist. But hicks are peculiar to certain areas, and a lot of people barely know they do exist. These are the people you can’t put on TV, because a lot of people just couldn’t process how hardcore they are.
So I wonder what’s going to happen to them. And I’m open to the possibility that, while the blacks were smart enough to get to the Superdome, get on the buses when they arrived, and get out of town, the white hicks will stay in NOLA and become feral. It depends on whether disease kills them outright before the water recedes, on whether there’ll be enough wildlife for them to hunt and fish, and on whether they can get along with each other. If enough of them survive, NOLA may simply become the new Appalachia.
Im betting when the next hurricane hits (whereever), a lot of folks will not go to the supersized shelter after hearing the stories of beatings rape and murder that occured in that so called superdome safe zone from katrina.
WHy they wont’ evacuate now?, heck it seems the authorities are sending folks anyplace they can and not even keeping a list of who went where. I don’t think its a black or white thing, just a eccentric hick thing that is surfacing among holdouts.
By the way, hicks can be found anywhere, upstate NY, mid michigan, you name it, there are some that just embrace that hick lifestyle.
I saw some of that CNN footage, it plays like a Jeff Foxworthy joke. If your house is under five feet of water and you decide to stay, you might be a redneck. {rimshot} Some of those people make me ashamed of my species.
It seems to me that the ones that *didn’t * come to the Superdome or the Convention Center were the smarter ones. They were the ones that had some water and food ready when the storm hit, so they could wait a few days before leaving their houses (this is, of course, excluding those people forced onto their roofs).
That said, I’ve got to wonder about the ones that are still refusing to leave even after they’ve been told it will take months to get the water out of there. These ones seems to be both black and white, but mostly older people and people that have pets. They don’t want to abandon what they treasure.
[Nitpick] You can’t live in a major metropolitan city, and be a hick at the same time. [/Nitpick]
There were several poor white people mixed in with the poor black people, at the superdome and convention center. I imagine there were more than the ones we actually saw.
The reason we’re probably seeing more whites still in their houses, is because the rescue boats started in the inner city neighborhoods, and are just now reaching the outer ones.
I suspect that guy on the tire was homeless before the flood.
Well, yeah, that goes along with those people on roofs and in attics. If you don’t have any of your house above water, those food and water supplies aren’t going to do you a lot of good. But was that the case with those 60,000 or so that showed up at the Superdome and convention center? Perhaps so, I don’t know.
I go along with hillbilly queen on the hicks. They only live out in the woods.
The “hick” just manifests differently. If you think the country has a monopoly on hicks, you haven’t lived in the right part of town.
Try a poor white part of Baltimore someday, you’ll see. Folks with no teeth. No less inbred than their country brethren. Never set eyes more than 10 blocks from where they grew up. Beat up old cars, trash in the yard, too many dogs, guns, holes in the house. No education. No health. Smoking, drinking, drugging. It’s no different.
I grew up in a pretty rural part of Maine, and I knew hicks. I’ve been in Baltimore for 9 years now, and I’m telling you, city hicks are the same thing. I don’t think they have 'em in Manhattan or maybe even DC but do not underestimate city hick.
Today on the radio the live coverage of the forced evacuation of New Orleans included an Aussie reporter talking to a family that had holed up in a high school. The father said that they had a huge dry area all to themselves with enough food and water to last months. I would love to know how they managed it and apparently were left alone.
I saw a family holed up in a school, maybe it was that one. They said they were going to stay. The heartbreaking thing was, they had a 3 month old baby with them. The camera crew returned the next day to find them gone, so hopefully, someone talked some sense into them. Goddamnit, people, knock yourself out staying in unserviced, diseased filth, but please let your kids find safety and security, please!