I use the words “class warfare” and “race warfare” sparingly because I think that the concepts behind those words are so serious as to require restraint. We shouldn’t cheapen their meaning with overuse.
But watching what is going on in the Katrina aftermath, I can think of no other words to describe the criminal neglect of this government and this nation. And I attribute that neglect to both the rightward shift and to America’s shameful history when it comes to class, poverty and race.
The rightward shift gave us Bush. And it also gave us the right-wing media, who gleefully reported “looters” and depicted the chaos in New Orleans as about “personal responsibility.” Fox even had a professor from Florida say that no aid should go to New Orleans – which market forces should take care of this kind of crisis alone.
And the history of racial apartheid, slavery and institutional racism gave us the attitudes that would lead some in government to think that a stadium without emergency supplies and effective backup power would suffice for tens of thousands of people. This history makes it seem perfectly okay in the minds of some to leave the poor behind in hot, dirty and cramped quarters.
There is absolutely no way that George Bush would of traveled to Arizona had 10,000 white middle-class suburbanites been in similar need. There is no way that FEMA would be absent from the scene, slow to respond and ineffective on so many counts. Instead, there would be tens of thousands of churches opening themselves up to house the refugees, the full National Guard and military would be marshaled to provide aid, commercial airliners would be asked to donate airplanes to assist. Trucks with food and water would be lining up on freeways to the affected areas. Every state in the nation would be offering real shelter. The US would accept any and all aid from the rest of the world. There would be thousands of helicopters, hundreds of boats and there would be tons of pressure to do even more.
What we are witnessing is the conservative agenda in action. It is cruel, hateful and shameful. We have witnessed this in Iraq. Now we see it at home. Shame on us for letting this happen. Shame on Bush for doing it.
