The question had been asked several times, how white were the WTC victims? I found a factual answer and posted the link. Obviously, you’ll draw your own conclusions, but in the sense that at least the question has been answered in a much more accurate way than either your personal 9/11 experiences or mine could address, this sets us both straight. I have no answer as to how rich they were; nor an answer to your other question. Earlier in the thread, a figure was posted for the population of the 9th ward of New Orleans: 98.3% black. The 9th ward, by all accounts so far, was home to nearly all the people stranded at the Superdome and the Convention Center. A general figure for the black population of New Orleans as a whole is 67%.
No, you’ve decided that’s what my point was. I agree that the above is a rather pedestrian conclusion. Part of the problem is, I’ve been arguing several points in this thread, not all of which I intended to. If you look around, there are a number of prominent black leaders now arguing that racism played a much more acute role in this than the OP suggests. There are some, such as Jesse Jackson, whose positions are very hard for even me to swallow.
Again, let me say that I feel like there’s an attitude among some here that if we don’t see burning crosses, we must not have racism. Your quote above suggests that you’re not in that boat, that you understand it’s a much more complex issue than that. So explain to me…who is “Whitey”? The President? All white people? Jim Crow? Because depending on who you mean, I might actually agree with you.
This is the second time you’ve made this ridiculous claim. I’d be delighted to know what the factual backdrop is for you to have come to this conclusion.
Monty, my good man, this is the secondtime you’ve said you were leaving this thread only to subsequently return. For someone so quick to accuse me of “dishonest” posting, you’re setting quite the example. But welcome back, I guess. Again.
Voluntary help was on the way as soon as the need appeared (after the storm). Federal help was already pre-staged and ready to go. FEMA had material set up in cities like Mobile Alabama (2 1/2 hrs away) which is where it needs to be.
Not only did the Mayor not relocate the indigent and disabled out of harms way there was a tremendous number of people who did not leave. They evacuated over 22,000 people in a week. Think about that number for a moment. An HH-60 Jayhawk helicopter is designed to rescue 6 people at a time. If it takes 5 minutes per person then that’s 30 minutes per extraction. If the drop-off zone is 15 minutes away that’s an hour per every 6 people rescued. That’s 3,333 sorties. I don’t know what a Jayhawk burns per hour but the Dolphins burn 68 gallons. That’s more than 200,000 gallons of fuel burned for rescue.
There are 40 Coast Guard Aircraft in the area. Doesn’t sound like much? They only have 80 HH-65 Dolphins and 35 HH-60 JayHawks in active service. That means 35 % of all available Coast Guard rescue helicopters have been pressed into use. In total, there are 300 helicopters in the arena doing rescue and repair. That’s a LOT of helicopters pulled out of active duty. This is probably going to be the largest rescue operation in the history of the United States.
I’m impressed; I could scrape up the helicopter details.
I was wondering if there were any military helicopters that could have been brought in sooner.
The Volunteer effort I was referring to was utilizing volunteer truckers & FedEx & etc to move supplies were needed. The Supplies to Texas for the evacuees was lagging and probably could have been greatly improved.
Every story about FEMA turning away Wal-Marts trucks because they just showed up increases my ire.
So the first stage failure to evacuate all those non-whites was by the non-white mayor and the democratic governor.
I am still convinced that the city, state & Feds need to all share the blame and that the failure was not racist.
Mayor: did not do a great job
Governor was Clueless and looked clueless on her long interview on CNN on Tuesday night.
FEMA: Biggest idiot ever!!!
Bush & Congress: Wow, biggest natural disaster ever in USA, maybe we should get around to ending our vacations and doing something.
Putting FEMA under Homeland Security: gee a rapid response group is now buried under many new layers of red tape.
I was all over the web trying to find this so I hope you appreciate the fact that I have dial-up. Please note there is a certain amount of license as to what is purely New Orleans and what is in other locations. I tried to round down in an attempt to reflect the events in the city. I believe a lot of the airborne equipment was diverted to New Orleans from surrounding areas after the levees broke but I can’t verify that at this time.
As of yesterday afternoon, 22,800 people had been rescued This number is the most vague as it does not specify if any were boat related. The first 2 days would have been almost exclusively by helicopter due to rioting (specifically the hospitals).
Information on the short range HH-65 Dolphin including fuel burn and range. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find what I wanted on the Jayhawks. Those are the Medium range helicopters you usually see in spectacular sea rescues.
The total # of helicopters involved in the disaster is 374 not including civilian models (which is not known). Not all of these are in New Orleans so I lowered my number to 300.
More than 40 Coast Guard aircraft from units along the entire Eastern Seaboard, along with more than 30 small boats, patrol boats and cutters, were positioned around the area to be ready to conduct post-hurricane search and rescue operations and to do waterway damage checks and begin any needed repairs.
This is what I believe also. It has nothing to do with the color of their skin but with the balance of their bank account, in other words discrimination, not racism(same shit different name).
There was a reporter (CNN) ouside a public hospital that had 200 patients to be evacuated and was saying that a few hundred metres down the road where a private hospital stood every one had been evacuated a day earlier by helicopters…and he meant everyone including the stuff, while in the public hospital they were dying.
we are all equal (blacks and whites) but some are more equal than others
Sure. My only concern remains, though: to what extent would have that early mobilization of “amateur” help gotten in the way of the massive “professional” response that took longer to get rolling but was ultimately more far-reaching and complete in nature?
Valid point, but the extra food & cots at the various Texas arena’s would have helped a lot.
Same for the extra water & food at Baton Rouge. There were several days were none of this was in place yet and could have been.
OK you’ve done a fair job of defending the motivations of the decisions, and I’ll concede that point to you. But you’ve still bypassed my main point. Which is that motivations are not terribly relevant. I think the fundamental point of confusion here is the term racism. Any time that someone brings up race, people think that they’re making an accusation of racist intent. In effect the logic is: an observation about racial disparity = accusation of racism = an accusation of racist motivation.
But it is possible to have a highly segregated society with no intention among the people for that to be the case. Structures and policies can still systematically discriminate against a group of people just by overlooking their particular circumstances. If you listen carefully to the original OP, and to me, and to most of the CBC and even to Kanye West the term “racism” is not very much in evidence. The language is mostly - look these are the people who are being neglected. These people are the ones who are dying, etc. We have to change the system.
You’re rebuttal though still addresses almost exclusively motivation. You think if you can show that there was no conscious or unconscious desire to discriminate on the basis of race then there is no racial preference. If the origin isn’t racism - but is cronyism, mismanagement, etc.- then the effects can’t be racially biased. But that’s not necessarily the way it works out.
The fact is that poor black people are seeing the effects and are inferring the motivation. White middle class people are seeing the motivation and ignoring the effects.
So, is it or is it not racism that has resulted in no adequate planning being done for the eventual eruption of Mt. Ranier?
I’m not sure that I am actually focusing on motivation. I certainly acknowldege that institutional racism (in which motivation is not really a factor) exists. The problem is that it seems to me that we gain no benefit (as in preventing repeats of this disaster) by focusing on the fact that a disproportionate number of people who were harmed were black. What does claiming “racism” do to change our behavior to prevent this in the future? Do we choose to never address an evacuation plan for Seattle so as to even out the problems? Do we go into New Orleans and give all the poor black survivors extra help while ignoring the poor white survivors?
I am not a fan of the twits who claim that “they could have gotten out if they had wanted to” or “this is America and anyone who fails makes their own decisions to fail.” Certainly, the Gretna cops who held (black) people inside New Orleans, then crossed into New Orleans to destroy their refugee camp were acting on racist impulses. But leveling charges of racism at Bush or Republicans or politicians does not change anything. Unless we have a specific racist action that can be reversed (or, in the case of Gretna, I hope punished), we need to focus on ways to raise all people from the underclass, making sure that we do not (deliberately or inadvertantly) put racial barriers in the way of people trying to escape.
Raising the spectre of racism with no evidence of actual racist decisions simply provides ammunition for the people who claim that cries of racism are merely people crying “Wolf!” and can be ignored as pleas for special treatment. Then, when an actual racist decision is made, the greater public ignores accusations against it as just one more false cry.
For a fleeting moment, my hope was that maybe it would wake people up - black and white. Maybe we could have addressed the effects of institutional racism and classism and made a serious effort to wipe it out in all depressed areas in the country. Not that I think that there would be no more poor people and the United State would become some sort of utopia, but maybe that people would be given a real opportunity to obtain a better life. Maybe real solutions to the problems facing poor blacks and whites would finally be addressed.
But as is evident here, nothing is going to change. People will just continue to say those black people are just trying to get something for nothing by playing the race card. They’ll bury their heads in the sand again.
This was a real opportunity for us to grow as a country.
I don’t believe that the majority of white people in this country are racists. I must say that it feels really good to see all of the individual donations and people taking the evacuees in and giving them back their humanity and dignity. It feels really good for once to actually feel like the majority of individuals in this country actually see a large group of blacks and see them as people.
And isn’t it a shame that in 2005 that’s a thought that crosses my mind? When will this be over? For which of my descendants will any form of racism be truly in the past?
For all of you who said no one would debate that this was handled well… Au contraire!
On Sunday, Jack Kelly, a columnist who writes for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (a mere several hundred miles from the devastation) claims that this was “the most monumental and successful disaster relief operation in world history.”
You can enjoy the man’s wisdom firsthand, my friend. His comment about this being the most successful ever is two short paragraphs above his bullet points.