"The media suppresses photos of white looters"
"bush let the levy break because NO votes dem"

Too bad this guy can't come to Houston and see all the "white folks" helping the refugees

We are on our own
In the US, white people can't imagine black people who are just like them
Darryl Pinckney
Saturday September 3, 2005
The Guardian
www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1561997,00.html
There were a number of white looters involved in the LA riots, a fact ignored or suppressed a decade ago. And so, as a black viewer, I was relieved yesterday when Channel 4 News finally found a white face among the victims of Hurricane Katrina pushing shopping carts through the water. The woman insisted to the camera that it was the police themselves who had told people to go into stores and get what they needed. She hadn't taken any clothes, she said. She was surviving, not shopping.

The only other white faces I saw during the report were those of national guardsmen, pleading officials and helicopter rescue personnel. I was so busy hoping that the news would get across the commonality created by the emergency that I completely missed the point. There is a reason everyone whom reporters found on the beach front in Biloxi, Mississippi, was white and in some cases low-income: US-style residential segregation.
And there is a reason why the people left behind in New Orleans were black: they make up the majority of the population within the city limits and among them are the city's poorest citizens. However, they don't make up the majority of the greater New Orleans area. Black people are not in the majority in any metropolitan area in the US, though they do outnumber white people overall in the state of Mississippi, where there has never been a black governor.

Black people watching in the rest of the country understood right away what was happening. The poor had been left to be washed away, then to fend for themselves. Maybe pockets of rich people will be discovered, guarding their possessions, but most likely there will be stories of the poor defending what they had. Those with money, white and black, got out.

Maybe a number of people paid little heed to the warnings to evacuate, because there had been such warnings in the past and the storms turned out not to be as furious as had been predicted; but maybe large numbers didn't leave because they had no way to get out, no car, no bus ticket, and because they had nowhere to go if they did get out, no money for a motel. It was not a nice experience watching helpless blacks, the elderly, pregnant women, and children, being winched to safety by helmeted white guys.

Fortunately, a black guy, a volunteer, was filmed using an axe to chop through rooftops to help people escape. They were soaked, and the dread they'd just escaped in those attics of ever rising water was suggested by the expressions on their faces. The rest of the US could see their fear, but they couldn't see the country's fear of them.

In the US, white people are able to conceive of black people who are better than they are or worse than they are, superior or inferior, but they seem to have a hard time imagining black people who are just like them. Officials in the affected areas are already beginning to have their say about the inadequacy of the measures the federal and state governments had in place to cope with the catastrophe, but maybe one of the reasons the rest of the country sat around and didn't seem able to take hold right away was their fear of the black people left behind.

When I heard that relief workers had been told not to go on the New Orleans streets I had to ask if they were white. One story quoted a black woman who complained that the truckloads of national guardsmen wouldn't make eye contact with the people in the streets. Maybe they are under orders determined by emergency priorities, but in the south the national guard is overwhelmingly white. These are the new policemen, with shoot-to-kill orders. The images of black people emerging from broken glass fronts with armloads of clothes or cigarettes bring to mind the LA riots, as if to say: this is what black people do at the first breakdown of public order. They, or the criminals and opportunists among them, can turn even a natural disaster into civil disorder. So far only Jesse Jackson has complained about the racist display the US is putting on for an international audience.

Louisiana has a large poor white population, but where have they gone? Where are the white people? New Orleans sits in a basin and hasn't the same pattern of suburbs as other US cities, but it does have them. Ninety percent of the houses in the town of Slidell, just over the bridge across Lake Pontchartrain, have been ruined. The west-lying towns, on higher ground, all have a river side, their backs to the levee. Where are those residents? They got out.

Novelist Richard Ford, who lived in New Orleans for many years, observed that Mayor Nagin had been brave to tell everyone to leave. People in the Superdome are alive, he said, because they were there, not somewhere else, but then the conditions quickly deteriorated. Of the 25,000 people shipped to the Houston Astrodome the vast majority are black. The crowd at the convention centre includes white people, but the feeling among black people seems to be that the media have once again found an occasion to portray black people as lawless and that were an equal number of whites stranded in a destroyed city, federal government help would have been dispatched more quickly.

The army bases that have been closed recently in the south as economy measures should be opened up. It is a scandal that at the time of writing there have been no air drops of any kind. The recovery will be difficult, because of who has insurance and who doesn't, to start with. And then there is all that mud. Maybe Bush can't respond convincingly to the calamity because to do so would require thinking along New Deal lines, in terms of the kind of governmental agencies that he is ideologically opposed to.

After years of not investing in the country's infrastructure, this could be the first consequence of misspending. The US telephone systems, bridges, railroads and highways are in poor shape. The authorities were told 25 years ago that the New Orleans levees could not withstand a storm of Katrina's magnitude, but a city that votes Democratic wasn't going to get the necessary allocations to refortify the works. Bush turned down foreign aid because America is the giver, not the receiver, but they are also not talking much in the US news media about what we can't afford and what resources aren't available because of the war in Iraq.

We are becoming like the countries we criticise and pity, places where the state and the society have less and less to do with each other. We are on our own, but then black people have always known that.

· Darryl Pinckney is the author of a novel, High Cotton

We shall know the truf and it will set us free.

Yep, checked my care-o-meter, still -259449595....

Well boo hoo!

Black people watching in the rest of the country understood right away what was happening. The poor had been left to be washed away, then to fend for themselves. Maybe pockets of rich people will be discovered, guarding their possessions, but most likely there will be stories of the poor defending what they had. Those with money, white and black, got out.

Being rich is evil. Being rich and white makes you Satan.

I cannot imagine finding myself in a situation so ill prepared with the basics as the refugees of any color in NOLA.

It's been less than a week. Nobody should be needing govt water drops yet. Anyone running out of water in 3-5 days is a Darwin candidate at best.

"Black people watching in the rest of the country understood right away what was
happening. The poor had been left to be washed away, then to fend for themselves. "

Surely there is a major fundraising event being planned right this minute by
the rappers, hip hop "artists", the basketball, baseball, football players
(that must have been what was keeping them from helping with the relief efforts)

Friday, 2nd September 2005
Anarchy and agony in New Orleans

The explosions came as British students caught up in the horror of Hurricane Katrina spoke of their four days of "hell" at the New Orleans Superdome.

They described how their place of refuge descended into a scene of terror as people ran wild with knives and guns, used crack cocaine and hurled racial abuse.

Meanwhile, President Bush was coming under increasing criticism over his management of the crisis.

New Orleans' top emergency official called his government's relief effort a "national disgrace" and questioned when reinforcements would actually reach the increasingly lawless city.

Terry Ebbert, the city's head of emergency operations, added it had taken too long to evacuate the Superdome, which quickly became "a squalid shelter for tens of thousands of storm victims".

Hungry

In one of the grimmest scenes, outside the New Orleans Convention Centre, an old man lay dead in a fold-up chair as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her.

Tourists, meanwhile, were turned out of hotels to face terror on the streets. Debbie Durso of Washington, Michigan, said she asked a police officer for assistance and his response was, "Go to hell - it's every man for himself."

Up to 30 British students huddled among the thousands in the Superdome were forced to set up a makeshift security cordon to fend off abusive locals.

Jamie Trout, 22, an economics student from Sunderland, kept a record of his terrifying ordeal. He wrote: "It was like something out of Lord of the Flies - one minute everything is calm and civil, the next it descends into chaos. A man has been arrested for raping a seven-year-old in the toilet, this place is hell. The smell is horrendous, there are toilets overflowing and people everywhere."

Jamie, who had been coaching football to disabled children as part of the Camp America scheme, said people were shouting racial abuse at the Britons because they were white.

Protection

Zoe Smith, 21, from Hull, told how students set up a security cordon when the power briefly went down in the Superdome amid fears they were going to be attacked. "All us girls sat in the middle while the boys sat on the outside, with chairs as protection," she said.

News of the students' ordeal came as New Orleans descended into anarchy

www.manchesteronline.co.uk/men/news/s/172/172478_anarchy_and_agony_in_new_orleans.html

I was going to go to the trouble of posting the Census info again, but why bother.

A writer for The Guardian won't bother checking the facts, or placing responsibility where it belongs.

Color doesn't matter in this instance, except to portray a representation of the populace. Bet if the victims had wanted to get to the store or the casino before Katy hit they could have arranged for a ride.

They were either selfish (waiting to loot "get what's theirs"  in the absence of law abiding citizens)...

shortsighted "The storm'll only last a few hours, then things will be back to normal"...

disbelieving "Yeah, I heard the weather warning about DANGER and UNINHABITABLE - they're just tryin' to scare us"

or just plain stupid.

Quoted: or just plain stupid.

Here's your winner

Why Hurricanes strike where they do:

"The cone of certainty"

Category 1 - Few Democrats
Category 2 - Some Democrats
Category 3 - Many Democrats
Category 4 - Mostly Democrats
Category 5 - Totally Democrat

Based on Katrina being a Cat 4, there were probably some Republicans who did "undocumented shopping", like snatching some batteries for thier PlayStation Portable or pocket vibrator - these are 2 good examples of Republican necessities, and of course notes were left behind with info on where to send the bill and an apology.

I was relieved yesterday when Channel 4 News finally found a white face among the victims of Hurricane Katrina pushing shopping carts through the water.

He was relieved.


They finally found a white face.


Seems like they had to look really hard to do that.



I don't have the energy to respond to the rest of that claptrap right now.

Quoted: Friday, 2nd September 2005 Anarchy and agony in New Orleans The explosions came as British students caught up in the horror of Hurricane Katrina spoke of their four days of "hell" at the New Orleans Superdome. They described how their place of refuge descended into a scene of terror as people ran wild with knives and guns, used crack cocaine and hurled racial abuse. Meanwhile, President Bush was coming under increasing criticism over his management of the crisis. New Orleans' top emergency official called his government's relief effort a "national disgrace" and questioned when reinforcements would actually reach the increasingly lawless city. Terry Ebbert, the city's head of emergency operations, added it had taken too long to evacuate the Superdome, which quickly became "a squalid shelter for tens of thousands of storm victims". Hungry In one of the grimmest scenes, outside the New Orleans Convention Centre, an old man lay dead in a fold-up chair as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her. Tourists, meanwhile, were turned out of hotels to face terror on the streets. Debbie Durso of Washington, Michigan, said she asked a police officer for assistance and his response was, "Go to hell - it's every man for himself." Up to 30 British students huddled among the thousands in the Superdome were forced to set up a makeshift security cordon to fend off abusive locals. Jamie Trout, 22, an economics student from Sunderland, kept a record of his terrifying ordeal. He wrote: "It was like something out of Lord of the Flies - one minute everything is calm and civil, the next it descends into chaos. A man has been arrested for raping a seven-year-old in the toilet, this place is hell. The smell is horrendous, there are toilets overflowing and people everywhere." Jamie, who had been coaching football to disabled children as part of the Camp America scheme, said people were shouting racial abuse at the Britons because they were white. Protection Zoe Smith, 21, from Hull, told how students set up a security cordon when the power briefly went down in the Superdome amid fears they were going to be attacked. "All us girls sat in the middle while the boys sat on the outside, with chairs as protection," she said. News of the students' ordeal came as New Orleans descended into anarchy www.manchesteronline.co.uk/men/news/s/172/172478_anarchy_and_agony_in_new_orleans.html

Sounds like there is a race problem in New Orleans, just not the one we're hearing about on the news.  

BINGO!

Quoted: We are on our own In the US, white people can't imagine black people who are just like them   Darryl Pinckney Saturday September 3, 2005 The Guardian www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1561997,00.html Channel 4 News finally found a white face among the victims of Hurricane Katrina pushing shopping carts through the water.

HAHAHAHA

`Will they attack?' whispered an awed voice. `We will be all butchered in this fog,' murmured another. The faces twitched with the strain, the hands trembled slightly, the eyes forgot to wink. It was very curious to see the contrast of expressions of the white men and of the black fellows of our crew, who were as much strangers to that part of the river as we, though their homes were only eight hundred miles away. The whites, of course greatly discomposed, had besides a curious look of being painfully shocked by such an outrageous row. The others had an alert, naturally interested expression; but their faces were essentially quiet, even those of the one or two who grinned as they hauled at the chain. Several exchanged short, grunting phrases, which seemed to settle the matter to their satisfaction. Their headman, a young, broad-chested black, severely draped in dark-blue fringed cloths, with fierce nostrils and his hair all done up artfully in oily ringlets, stood near me. `Aha!' I said, just for good fellowship's sake. `Catch 'im,' he snapped, with a bloodshot widening of his eyes and a flash of sharp teeth--'catch 'im. Give 'im to us.' `To you, eh?' I asked; `what would you do with them?' `Eat 'im!' he said curtly, and, leaning his elbow on the rail, looked out into the fog in a dignified and profoundly pensive attitude..

Originally Posted By vanilla_gorilla Sounds like there is a race problem in New Orleans, just not the one we're hearing about on the news.

BINGO!

It's just too sad that at the time when everyone should pull together the dems have to stir up all this racial bullshit

That has to be one of the most poorly written pieces of  journalism I have ever seen. My guess is that this guy has never even taken English 101 at a college level. Run on setences, skipping erratic ideas.....It's really hard to read. The ideas are only partially formed at best in most places, and in others they are not formed at all. How can this person be getting paid to write so poorly? Do the editors not care either?

Louisiana has a large poor white population

However, they [black people] don't make up the majority of the greater New Orleans area. Black people are not in the majority in any metropolitan area in the US

If he'd done some basic fact checking, he would know that the population of New Orleans is around 65% black.  Maybe that might have something to do with the low ratio of white people to black people?  

I have now come to know the true meaning of the term "Fucktard"