{"id":2222,"date":"2006-04-02T17:33:41","date_gmt":"2006-04-03T00:33:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/04\/02\/2222\/"},"modified":"2006-04-02T17:33:41","modified_gmt":"2006-04-03T00:33:41","slug":"2222","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=2222","title":{"rendered":"Racism and Hurricane Katrina"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is an essay on racism in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I took it out of the archive, but it is also fitting to talk about the desire to ignore racism. I have been hearing the same argument in the Duke rape case, and any other cases where race is clearly an issue.<\/em><\/p>\n

A few days back, I wrote about the differences between race and class<\/a>. I think it is very appropriate to talk about this because many people are debating about why so many people were left in New Orleans for days without being rescued. The fact that the people impacted in the city of New Orleans were overwhelmingly Black, and mostly likely poor, has not been lost on the mainstream news media and many bloggers. But the debate that always emerges in these situations is the “Race vs. Class”\u009d debate. The key question here is: were people left because they were poor or because they were Black? However, as a sociologist who studies racism, I see this clearly for the false debate that it is. It doesn’t have to be one or the other, in reality it is both race and class that matter. But unfortunately, very few people want to talk about race; it is much easier for Americans to talk about class because of the political climate I mentioned in the link above.<\/p>\n

What is somewhat depressing is how many commentators and bloggers have mentioned race only to follow it up with comments like…”there were poor Whites there too,”\u009d “now is not the time to talk about race; we need to rescue people.”\u009d (Could you imagine people after 9\/11 saying now is not the time to talk about terrorism? We need to rescue people.) The reality is that this is a great time to talk about race; the effects of racism have never been clearer. The institutionalized racism that has denied the African Americans of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama educational and economic opportunities over the last few hundred years is one of the biggest reasons that so many African Americans were unable to get out. Sure they were poor, but it is racism that has lead to the disproportionate poverty among African Americans and other people of color.<\/p>\n

Racism also played a factor in the media coverage and the perceptions of the media coverage in New Orleans. Numerous reports were made of looting and violence especially at the Civic Center and the Superdome. The TV anchors at the news desk kept repeating this, giving the impression that these areas were too violent to enter, but I noticed something very different from many of the reporters who actually made it into these areas. Tony Zumbado and Carl Quintanilla from NBC both were at the Civic Center and they reported that the people were not violent, as did several other reporters (including Fox News’ Shepard Smith). Even Harry Connick, Jr. entered the Civic Center and came out saying the people were desperate but not violent. This is not say that there were not acts of violence, but in spite of evidence to the contrary, people refused to believe that the vast majority of the people in New Orleans were not violent.<\/p>\n

The violence stereotype of African Americans is very powerful. In the 2000 General Social Survey Americans were asked to rank African Americans on a scale of 1-7, with 7 being the least violent and 1 being the most violent. 47% of Americans (and there is little difference between Blacks and Whites) ranked Blacks 1-3, while only 15% say Blacks are not violent prone, and the other 37.% camped out in the politically correct middle category. Given the number of people who think Blacks are prone to violence, it is not surprising that people refused to believe the reporters actually at the Civic Center. I think this is much more about race than it is about class. Even though many think poor people are violent, the media and the public very explicitly racialized this violence. The media did so by showing countless pictures African Americans and describing them as looters before acknowledging that fact that they had no food, no water, no diapers, and no way to get money (What were they suppose to do let their children dehydrate until the ATM worked again?).<\/p>\n

Numerous message boards, such as New York Craigslist were full of blatantly racist messages further promoting the racist angle on this. Here are a few quotes. In a post entitled “The Hurrican shows us the animal world of blacks”\u009d this poster said,<\/p>\n

“The Hurricane struck the mostly white towns of Mississippi even worse than New Orleans. But there was no looting, there were no rapes. People helped each other. But in New Orleans, once again, we see the lowlife nigger world. Once again, fat black mammys on welfare clutching bastard kids (the future muggers of America) screaming that no one is doing for them.”\u009d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In another post,<\/p>\n

“The more Kanye no talent, Al Sharpton, and the biggest racist of them all jesse jackson keep talking, the more we realize that those criminals are not worth saving. Apparently, welfare checks and government cheese arent enough. Now we have to relocate a bunch of boderline homeless each with a dozen kids. The superdome was like a maximum security prison with children for these thugs to rape and murder. I challenge anyone to show me a news clip or article that shows those animals banding together to try and help themselves.”\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These are just 2 quotes out of hundreds I have seen on message boards echoing similar sentiments. If race didn’t matter and if this was just about class, people wouldn’t be saying these things.<\/p>\n

This is not an argument that class doesn’t matter. I think this is a big factor, but we can’t ignore the racism this exposes. It is not impolite to discuss race in a time like this. It is unconscionable not to talk about race. Many of these people are poor because of the racism that continues to plague our society, and rather than being mad at the messengers, we should be mad at the message. Then we should do something about it.<\/p>\n

This is an oldy but goody from the Rachel’s Tavern<\/a> archive. I thought it was fitting to talk about the tendency for people to avoid talking about race in an honest and direct manner, especially since many people have admonished me not to talk about race in this case. What do you think about the general avoidance of frank discussions of race?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is an essay on racism in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I took it out of the archive, but it is also fitting to talk about the desire to ignore racism. I have been hearing the same argument in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-duke-rape-case","category-race-racism-and-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}