Oh, absolutely. I’m really happy that there have been billions of dollars in damages, and that thousands and thousands of people are dead. That just makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.
:rolleyes:
I just think that if the United States disgusts the OP that much, then maybe he’d be happier living elsewhere.
As I said in one of the GD threads, comparisons between the results of this hurricane and September 11th are not very good. New York City was accessible after the attacks. It was chaotic around the WTC, but there was nothing like this.
If you want a comparison to the attacks, look at the utterly disjointed the response to the hijackings as they were occurring and in the hours immediately after, before people were sure the air was safe. THAT was a mess.
Where’s the Pitting of this racist hurricane? 
Look, use your head for once. What’s the big difference between the 9-11 disaster and this one?
After 9-11, the towers collapsed, but everyone was either out of the buildings and headed for home on mostly still-working infrastructure, or they were in the towers when the collapsed and were dead. Sure, dismantling the wreckage was a huge job, but it was a conventional demolition job that just required attacking the pile with cranes and dumptrucks until it was gone. People that were hurt could be taken to hospitals with working water and electricity. No one needed to be evacuated because very few homes and apartments were destroyed, mostly office space. People who worked at the towers could take a shower and cook dinner and watch TV in their own homes where their water, sewer and electricity still worked.
In this disaster the transportation infrastructure in and out of the disaster area have been wrecked. How do you get supplies in and people out when the roads and railroads are wrecked? It isn’t just a matter of driving a few trucks full of supplies to the refugees, or loading the refugees into busses. How are you going to get the trucks over roads that don’t exist any more? How are you going to get the busses over roads that don’t exist any more? People can’t stay in their own homes, their homes are wrecked, and even if their homes are still standing they mostly don’t have water, sewage, or electricity.
Your assertion that racism is still a problem in this country is a non sequitor. Yeah, racism is a problem, so is alcoholism, so is spouse abuse, so are a lot of things. How exactly does racism hamper the rescue effort? Racism didn’t wash out the roads or destroy the electric grid or break the levees. You are comparing two disasters with completely different effects. If New York had been leveled by an earthquake we’d have a similar situation to the New Orleans disaster. So what does racism have to do with anything?
thanks Sequent for this thread. I think my thread here in the pit is heading in this direction.
tomndebb - I don’t think it’s a case of “we hate them darkies!” but more of how this nation values the lives of some citizens more than others. This has been beaten to death, but it’s amazing to me that in the United States, one lone jackass firing at a rescue chopper can suspend rescue efforts for thousands of people. I just can’t imagine a similar situation taking place in a predominantly White and/or affluent community. The police SWAT team would likely be on the spot instantly to dispatch the shooter.
Is it even imaginable that in any jurisdiction in America, people could go five days without food or water, and actually be told by leaders that they should loot and do what they need to do to survive? This is in the same nation that sends resources and rescue teams to save a little White girl in a well, or mobilizes thousands of people to search for a missing White bride-to-be, or devotes incredible media resources to coverage of a missing White teenager in Aruba.
I see it as yet another disturbing, but not shocking, example of how the lives of poor Americans and Black Americans are not as valued as the lives of middle-class and affluent Whites. If you are both - well, here’s a five-day case study on how you will fare.
Question: why don’t we start with the explanation of racism as a given, and look for evidence to disprove this thesis, instead of the other way around?
Answer: Because the burden of proof lies on the person making the claim.
If you’ve already decided to see racism at work, there’s no way you can be convinced otherwise. Show me National Guardsmen passing out supplies only to white people and we can call it racist. Show me that a city with virtually no infrastructure left has logistical problems, and I will be unsurprised.
How about a cite for the other assertion, that only 1% (400, using your original 40,000 total) of the refugees are non-black?
…but it’s not racist. I lived through a direct hit of a category IV hurricane, (Hugo, in 1989) and I can tell you, personally, the morning after the night of the storm, when ALL roads were impassable due to downed trees and powerlines and standing water, after I waded through the waist-deep water, marsh, dead fish, and debris surrounding my house to reach dry land, I could throw a rock and hit five guardsmen. They were on Sullivan’s Island protecting the piles of debris from looters (I lived just across the river and couldn’t get there!). There were supplies everywhere. Food, water, clothes, shelters. They were giving out chainsaws, for crying out loud. Within 12 hours of landfall. 135 mph winds. 20+ foot storm surge. FEMA descended like the plague and we were only too happy to see them!
Yes, it’s a logistical nightmare. Yes, it’s very, very, very hard. Wanh. We were halfway to Baghdad by this point in the war. We’re talking about 8-10 feet of standing water, not the bloody Red Sea. I contend that if there were stockbrokers stranded at the Superdome, we would not be seeing this.
No cite (yet). Just look at the footage. I’d say 1% is generous.
Bzzzt! Wrong. I’m sorry, but the correct answer is “1”. We would have also accepted, “What kind of stupid, short-sighted, race-baiting question is that?”
No, that isn’t what it means to be poor and black in America; it is just what it means to be the victim of a massive hurricane.
As for your sentiments toward America, I’m not so sure she’s too thrilled to have people like you for a citizen, but she’ll let you stay, and give you the right to run her name down without getting imprisoned. That’s just the kind of nice gal she is. I’m sorry that you have to build up a boogeyman to help you deal with the tragedy that surrounds you, but stop projecting your impotent rage and frustration onto those who are actually trying to do something to help the people.
That’s right. Whitey doesn’t care. Keep on sticking it to tha Man!
You’re full of shit, dude.
I don’t think racism is behind the inepititude we’re seeing. I simply think FEMA and DoHS was unprepared for a catostrophe on this scale.
But I do have to wonder if racism might affect the willingness of private citizens to give. Even on the StraightDope, a place I’d like to think of as being enlightened, people are blaming the victims. They are blaming them for living in such a low-lying locale. They are blaming them for not evacuating. They are blaming them for not seeking shelter in the Superdome and blaming those who did go there for its now uninhabitable condition. They are blaming the victims for trying to survive by “stealing” groceries (yes, I know not all the looters are grocery shopping). They are blaming them for the unsanitary conditions around them, and blaming them for the crime around them. People are willing to let innocents die just so they can be satisfied that thugs won’t get away with DVD players and gold jewerly. People have stopped seeing New Orleans residents as humans. They are now all “animals and savages”.
And while we’re are doing all this finger-pointing, name-calling, and eye-rolling, people are suffering and dying.
I watched Dateline yesterday and I couldn’t help noticing something. They spent a significant amount of time panning the camera on black victims, showing us their misery and wretchedness. But their “close-up” stories were on middle-class white people (although the woman who lost her two-year-old was a very light-skinned black woman, they highlighted the fact that she was from a “middle class” neighborhood). We were in a hotel room with a man who’d lost his multi-million dollar beachfront property, with his two dogs. We were in a small apartment being shared by a Scottish woman, a social worker, a handyman, and a couple–all white. Yes, there misery was just as real as the people suffering in the Civic Center, but they were treated more like humans by the reporter and the camera. They told us their names and gave us a little view of their lives. A lot of watchers are going to be thinking more about those people (who had clean water and food) than the ones screaming and wailing at the Civic Center, holding limp babies and calling for Jesus.
I went away thinking, “Man, white people’s problems must seem more important to Dateline’s producers than other people’s problems.” But then I realized that for a lot of people watching the show–this is EXACTLY the case. A friend at work remarked to me that there didn’t seem to be any white people in this disaster. Race was the first thing he and a lot of us saw once it all unfolded.
I’m sorry to say this, but I think a lot of Americans are looking for a quorum of white victims in this thing before they take out their checkbooks. Not the majority of us are like this, I don’t think, but a good many are.
It does? In which article?
If the levees had not broken, this would not have become the issue it has. It was a right-wing devcotion to privitization and a feel-good policy about Homeland Security combined with good ol’ boy patronage that led to the decisions to not rebuild the levees and the decision to disband the department of future analysis in FEMA. It was not racism, as none of the bad decision that led to the lack of planning or the failure to strengthen the levees paid any attention to who might be affected. (Before someone jumps on the “poor black population of New Orleans” schtick, recall that the broken levees are also severing communications for all the major industries that inhabit(ed) the high-rise towers in the Central Business District. No good ol’ boy would want to harm the economy in that way.)
The roads are limited to what we can drive through swamps (and across a lake). None of the roads were planned to keep black people in their places.
Sniper stopping rescue efforts? A couple of years ago a guy wandered into a building on a university campus in Cleveland and shot one person. The central city was brought to a halt for four hours while the SWAT teams went in to get him because no one knew whether he might start shooting out a window.
Blogs have indicated that the police Command and Control system in New Orleans have shut down, entirely. No right thinking Law and Order Republican would have deliberately taken an action that would have resulted in that problem.
There are a lot of problems, here, but I do not yet see evidence of racism.
I have been looking at the footage, and I also see plenty of white people stranded in Louisiana, along with a scattering of Asians, Hispanics and Mideasterners. And I guess all the non-white people who died on 9/11 don’t exist for you?
The situation is bad enough—please don’t drag imaginary racism into it to make things worse than they are (yes, of course I know racism is a problem in this country—hell, in every country—but this situation just does not fit the bill).
Why don’t we also start with the hypothesis that Bush caused the hurricane because of his racist weather controlling machine, and try to find evidence to disprove that thesis?
I will be the first to jump on the media for their disgraceful handling of race in relation to this tragedy. As has been pointed out, there is a noticible trend that white looters are just trying to survive, whereas black looters are, well, looters.
But as far as I can see, the whole relief effort for New Orleans has been been plain incompetent. I have a hard time believing that this incompetence was not the product of a plan or intentional neglect. From what I see, its mostly because the people responsible for all this fucked up and still don’t have their shit together. I have no confidence in Bush, no confidence in FEMA, and I don’t know jack about the governor of Louisiana, but I can’t say that she’s done a good job, either.
Out of curiosity, do you believe that the governor of Louisiana is racist for not using her powers as state commander in chief of the National Guard to send in troops earlier to save the largest city in her state?
Not a bit.
Absolutely.
Bzzzt! I’ve been the victim of a massive hurricane. I know exactly what it’s like. How about you?
Man, I ain’t even started to dis America. I have not yet BEGUN to sully her name. Being ashamed is my nice way of saying it. Yes, I’ll leave when I’m damn good and ready. I’m just thankful that I can.
Tell you what: when they stop trying and start helping, I’ll stop projecting.
So you admit you’re making up numbers based solely on what you see on television?
I’ll bet the “rich 9/11 victims” wished they had receieved a mandatory evacuation order 24 hours prior to the attack.