[From the diaries by susanhu.]
I made a comment today on dKos that echoed pieces I’ve written on my blog and on dKos:
race and racism: on dkos (do click on the comments)
and the race card.
I’d like to put out to the Booman political community (I’ve posted this at MyDD as well) that a discussion of race and poverty in the aftermath of Katrina is inevitable…and that how we have that discussion is important. If you’re interested….please read the flip.
Hurricane Katrina was color blind. The society it came ashore upon was not. The response of the media and the government was not.
In New Orleans, our media and our government responded to a natural disaster, a humanitarian crisis as if it was a “race riot.”
However, there was no riot in at the Superdome. There was no riot at the Convention Center. Both locales were refuges of last resort for poor citizens of New Orleans who did not have the means to evacuate and simply did as they were told, and behaved bravely with ZERO federal point person on the ground for days. From Monday afternoon well into Tuesday there was not mass civil disturbance in New Orleans. Even from Tuesday into Wednesday, the evidence is that the looting involved property crime for the most part…but with credible second hand reports of shots fired between some armed looters and the police.
The press, however, reported on New Orleans as if there was a widespread riot. And FEMA held off entering New Orleans out of concern for the safety of its rescuers and “difficulties” accessing the city. Even though, as the Times-Picayune has made clear to all the world, there was a clear path into the city…and teams of Coast Guard, local, and regional assistance and volunteers on the ground. (Respect to the Coast Guard for saving lives through all of this, they deserve credit.)
Race definitely had something to do with that state of affairs. We should talk about that.
In my view, our federal, state and municipal governments let all of our citizens down across the board in their response to Katrina. All citizens of the Gulf Coast…black and white, rich and poor, the vulnerable and the safely evacuated were poorly served by FEMA and our federal response…all citizens of the Gulf Coast were poorly served by the states of Louisiana and Mississippi, and by the municipal governments in place.
But in New Orleans a case can and should be made that race played a role in the effectiveness and character of our government’s response, and, through our national media, of our societal response to the disaster.
Let’s be very clear. Folks didn’t start dying in New Orleans till sometime late Tuesday when the waters rose. There were two days to restore order in the city and help evacuate those left behind…including those in hospitals and nursing homes who had ZERO means to leave…but FEMA did nothing even when it was clear that State and Local officials could not do the evacuation themselves. They treated New Orleans as a “riot zone”…they abandoned the city, and all the while our press focused on “looters.”
How many people died in New Orleans between Monday morning and Friday afternoon when the National Guard finally rolled in? How many people were alive on Friday, but unable to be rescued, and died over the weekend because of a too little, too late response by our government? How many people died period..and why is it Monday September 5th and we still have no idea of the number?
Race, and poverty, have something to do with that state of affairs. People died in New Orleans due to flooding that happened well after the hurricane. That raises questions that we will have to think long and hard about in the coming days and months. In my view, a discussion of race and racism needs to be on the table…and can’t be brushed aside as “playing the race card.”
As it stands, those who evacuated to the Superdome and the Convention Center, the vast majority of whom were citizens of color who had simply done as they were told, were abandoned by our government in their time of greatest need. A clear evacuation program on Monday and Tuesday might have drawn tens of thousands more citizens from their neighborhoods and to safety away from the flooding. That is not insignificant.
Instead the evacuees had no water, no food, not even a person with a clipboard to prioritize their plight and establish a set of rescue priorities. The helicopters that finally arrived on Thursday threw supplies on the ground a hundred yards from the site….no one inside those helicopters bothered to get out.
That is a violation of the fundamental social contract. I would argue that it does reflect racism, and that the treatment of the evacuees at the Superdome and Convention center will ultimately be judged to be a violation of their civil rights.
In my view we should have a serious conversation about this…and we shouldn’t pretend that we can somehow avoid it…or downplay it….or hype it. The death toll in the coming days will compel us to take our national loss here seriously…and not just those dead in New Orleans, but up and down the whole of the Gulf Coast.
As I said, the hurricane was color blind….the society it found as it struck our shores is not. What we do in response…what thinking we do, what new priorities we set…will serve as the measure of our national character.
In my view, a human disaster shaped by race and poverty followed the natural one which had already exacted a too harsh toll of death and destruction. We need to talk about that; we need to say…never again. And we need to say clearly to the nation, that American citizens deserve much better than what they got last week in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
