From Digby:
These last two weeks I’ve heard the old school racists dragging out the “n” word, but they are dying out. We aren’t going to see a lot of that anymore, thank god. But the code words were being slung around more freely than I’ve seen in ages. The first thing I heard out of people’s mouths was that these people had been “irresponsible” for not following the directions they were given. The next thing I heard was that “looters” were taking over the city and they should be shot. Then there was the “why do they have so many kids” and “why can’t they clean up after themselves” and “defecating where they stood.”
From The Wall Street Journal, via The Republic of T:
From The Republic of T:
Benign as it may be, we know now that passive indifference that Obama noted becomes malignant in a moment of crisis when it is manifest in one who’s supposed to be a leader. Bush may be, as the song goes, a good ol’ boy who’s “never meaning no harm,” but the record of what’s happened on his watch is another reality.
[snip]
Kayne gets it. Bush doesn’t care because he doesn’t get it. If he got it, he’d care. But he doesn’t care to get it. It’s not an active hatred. It’s a “passive indifference.’ Unfortunately, it’s recently proven as deadly as active hatred.
From The New York Times (via Attytood):
The paramedics and two other witnesses said officers sometimes shot guns over the heads of fleeing people, who, instead of complying immediately with orders to leave the bridge, pleaded to be let through, the paramedics and two other witnesses said. The witnesses said they had been told by the New Orleans police to cross that same bridge because buses were waiting for them there.
Instead, a suburban police officer angrily ordered about 200 people to abandon an encampment between the highways near the bridge. The officer then confiscated their food and water, the four witnesses said. The incidents took place in the first days after the storm last week, they said.
4 Comments on "Racism and Katrina"
Rod:
This gives me the chance to rant about David Brooks’ column from last week about the wonderful opportunity Hurricane Katrina offers us to re-engineer some of our social structures, as follows:
“In those cultural zones, many people dropped out of high school, so it seemed normal to drop out of high school. Many teenage girls had babies, so it seemed normal to become a teenage mother. It was hard for men to get stable jobs, so it was not abnormal for them to commit crimes and hop from one relationship to another. Many people lacked marketable social skills, so it was hard for young people to learn these skills from parents, neighbors and peers.
If we just put up new buildings and allow the same people to move back into their old neighborhoods, then urban New Orleans will become just as rundown and dysfunctional as before.
That’s why the second rule of rebuilding should be: Culturally Integrate. Culturally Integrate. Culturally Integrate. The only chance we have to break the cycle of poverty is to integrate people who lack middle-class skills into neighborhoods with people who possess these skills and who insist on certain standards of behavior.”
There is so much with which to take issue here that I don’t even know where to begin, but I think it’s fairly safe to say that he’s speaking in a barely disguised code here. The last sentence is my favorite, as if being middle class is a skill that is a) acquirable and b) desirable, and that such a status should in fact be considered a benchmark in polite and civilized society. Bullshit, is what I say to that. Bullshit, you racist, elitist son of a bitch.
Aut:
actually, while I don’t like the tone of that quote, a lot of the message has merit. concentrated poverty, american apartheid, systemic racial and economic segregation — whatever you want to call it — is one of the main contributors to the cycle of poverty. developing and sustaining integrated neighborhoods equalizes the playing field in many ways — it allows those who are poor to attend better schools and have access to better social services than they might have in their isolated, impoverished, and largely ignored areas.
Again, i’m not a big fan of the terminology, but if you replace “middle-class skills” with things such as traditional banking, job-hunting skills, and better basic education, what’s being stated is largely true. In low-income communities people lack certain skills — their families don’t have those skills, others in their communities don’t have those skills, they fear traditional systems (largely because of historical racism), so instead of, say, opening a checking account they go to a check cashing establishment and pay 200% interest.
To be clear: I don’t believe that plopping a black family on the block next to a white family means that they will automatically learn by osmosis the skills that many middle-class white folks take for granted (poor white folks suffer many of the same disadvantages of poor minorities). But having a system whereby resources are more equitably distributed among folks of different income levels is good for everyone involved.
jess:
Matt, could you please imbed this for me? I am having inexplicable difficulties: http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/comments/720/ The piece itself is great for the racism discussion, but the commentary smells like an old, favorite coat.
Lance Mannion:
Points of view: a memo to self to get to work
As Obi-wan tells Luke, most things depend on your point of view. Commenting on my post the other day, Doggedly flunking Psych 101, Greg pointed out that I might have been going a little hard on Newsweek’s Evan Thomas. I’d built my post around a singl…
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