THE RACE QUESTION!!!

[mburbank]

Boy, does the whole question of Race in the aftermath of Katrina PISS PEOPLE OFF!

I initially had been uninterested in discussing this, but anything that garners such a strong reaction is obviously something that needs discussing.

and of course, there's todays poll.



(CNN) -- White and black Americans view Hurricane Katrina's aftermath in starkly different ways, with more blacks viewing race as a factor in problems with the federal response, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Monday.

The poll found that six in 10 blacks interviewed said the federal government was slow in rescuing those stranded in New Orleans after Katrina because many of the people in the Louisiana city were black. But only about one in eight white respondents shared that view.


Now, y'all know me, I'm a class war guy. I think the poor should all make common cause against the rich 'cause there's way more poor folks. But here are my questions.


1.) WHY do way more black people think race was at issue than white people? I tried out several answers just to see how they sounded, and they all seemed... well... pretty racist.

2.) A lot of people acknowledge that not only will the poor suffer dispraportionately in Katrina's wake, the poor got totally screwed during Katrina, in that if you didn't have a car you were way more hosed than if you did. That being said, the vast majority of poor folks in NO are black. Statistically, African American's are way more likely to be poor than whites. If Race isn't part of the equation, what explains it? If the playing field is even, why are African American's mired in poverty? Are they just worse than whites? Is there culture inherently inferior?

I don't think GW is inherently racist. I don't think he sat on his ranch thinking "Let them people rot, they jus' darkies anyway." I think most people (but not anywhere near all) are past that stage of overt racism.
I think GW (and most americans) racism is far more subtle and unintentional, but its entrenched, it goes deep and it's getting worse.

I also think that at this point, racism in the US is inextricably tangled with classism. I don't think America hates it's poor, I think it can't see them. It certainly doesn't understan them. How else could we have a minimum wage so far bellow what you can live on? How else could we have new bankruptcy laws that ignore the fact that most bankruptcies are caused by pepple with no medical insurance getting sick. How else could we have a million more people in poverty this year, so many people who if they lost their housing might never again be able to get first, last and a security deposit together again?

If you are born into poverty it is very, very, very hard to escape. Not impossible, but hard. A disproportionate number of blacks are born into poverty and I contend they will face disproportionate difficulty in housing, in jobs, in the justice system.

I don't think poverty stricken blacks suffer any more than poverty stricken whites. I don't think if Katrina had hit a city who's poorest citizens were white help would have gotten there any more quickly. I do think if the Hurricane had hit martha's Vineyard or Kennebunkport the reaction would have been lightening fast becaue you don't mess around when rich, powerful people are at stake.

If you are born poor in America, you have a very hard road ahead of you. And if you're black, you are more likely to be born poor, and more likely to stay poor, and the vast majority of white voters don't want to talk about it, and more and more you see anger if the question is raised.

It's not the Ku Klux Klan. It's not even Archie Bunker. But I think it's still racism.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Originally Posted by mburbank

2.) A lot of people acknowledge that not only will the poor suffer dispraportionately in Katrina's wake, the poor got totally screwed during Katrina, in that if you didn't have a car you were way more hosed than if you did. That being said, the vast majority of poor folks in NO are black. Statistically, African American's are way more likely to be poor than whites. If Race isn't part of the equation, what explains it? If the playing field is even, why are African American's mired in poverty? Are they just worse than whites? Is there culture inherently inferior?

I think you're getting into dangerous Bill Cosby territory here. George Will, who I usually think is a great conservative thinker, seriously said on Sunday that one reason so many African-Americans didn't know what to do when Katrina hit was that there were no fathers around. No joke.

I think the conservative argument would be public schools, welfare state dependency, the New Deal, Jesse Jackson, and Democratic machines that rely on poor black voters.

I don't buy much of that at all, and I feel terribly unqualified to talk about how black people need to work harder and depend on the government less. I haven't donated NEARLY enough money yet to charity to justify making that statement, even if I believed it.

A lot of the argument is relativistic, too. Even this week, the Wall Street Journal and Will are arguing that the poverty index is bullshit. Walt Williams would tell you that if you took all of the blacks in America, they are like the 14th richest country in the world. They'd say "do poor people own so many pairs of Nikes and TVs???"

So really, the debate isn't even how you framed it, Max. It isn't why do poor people tend to be black, the real debate to be had is "are there really so many poor people?"

[ziggytrix]

Class mobility in America is the dream, but the system as it is only has so much room for members in upper classes.

If a person starts a chain of stores that makes him a multimillionaire, that's 30 people whose stores were shut out. So while everyone has a shot at success, not everyone has the same shot, and not everyone can win, even if they try as hard as they can.

When faced with such an unfair predicament you look for something to blame. The easiest thing to do is say it's someone else's problem. Like when affluent people say poverty in America is a self-inflicted condition, or when a poor person says he fails because of "the man".

[Abcdxxxx]

If you went to Harlem, Compton, East Oakland, etc. and took a poll amongst Black Americans to see if they think 911 really is a joke, the findings would be expected. This is just the same poll on a national scale.

Again, I think that's all pretty muddled. Something happened in New Orleans that didn't happen in other jurisdictions which were equally or perhaps even more poverty stricken. This was a very clear disregard for a very clear demographic, but it wasn't just class structure alone, and it's a mistake to label them Poor and Black, when a lot of them were just working class and middle class who happened to make up that 80% of Orlineans that happen to be Black. The hurricane has brought a lot of civil rights issues to the surface. Race is just the most obviouse.

[mburbank]

I think if you take a look at how many people couldn't get out of the way of Katrina you'll have your answer.

As for the nonsense about our poor blacks being the 14'th richest nation... do they say that factors in cost of living? Cause I'm think a weeks worth of groceries in the black whole of Calcutta costs less than it does at the Piggly Wiggly.

In addition, I'd say that the relative poverty of other countries and their policies towards their poorest citizens is totally immaterial. We as a nation can make a determination of what level of poverty is acceptable and as of the day before Katrina we had. What we think now remains to be seen.

As for the Bill Cosby stuff, while I think there's some truth to it, I don't think it's even half the story. I was just putting it out on the table. Like a lot of rich old people, Cosby thinks his story is the only story. I have no doubt at all that he worked very, very hard to overcome poverty amidst the form racism took in his day. I'm old enough to remember Cosby as an angry young man. But just as there are very few people who have the stuff to climb out of poverty Michael Jordan, there are very few people who with a huge amount of hard work could become one of the greatest comics who ever lived. When he was rude to Wanda Sykes (an emmy award winning writer and performer who in addition to being black is also a woman) for not toeing his speciffic line he blew a large portion of his credability on the subject for me.

[ziggytrix]

Well, if you worked hard for something and got it, and another person tried but couldn't get it, obviously they just didn't work as hard as you, right?

I'm mean, there's obviously no such things as luck, fate, or God's will.

[mburbank]

Here's Condi weighing in on the issue, and it seems to me she's not on the same page as the president.

(CNN) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the people who were stranded in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina are evidence that race and poverty can still come together "in a very ugly way" in parts of the "Old South."

"The United States should want to do something about that," Rice said in an interview Monday with the editorial board of The New York Times. "There are still places that race and poverty are a huge problem in the United States, and we've got to deal with that."


Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but it seems to me Condi is saying that Race is still and issue and was a factor in Katrina's aftermath. If Hillary Clinton had used thsoe exact same words, would she have been 'playing the race card'? Is Condi 'playing the race card'?

[KevinTheOmnivore]

And again, Colin Powell's take on it. Clearly, these two voices don't carry the weight that say Kanye West does, but it's worth noting:

"When you look at those who weren't able to get out, it should have been a blinding flash of the obvious to everybody that when you order a mandatory evacuation, you can't expect everybody to evacuate on their own. These are people who don't have credit cards; only one in 10 families at that economic level in New Orleans have a car. So it wasn't a racial thing — but poverty disproportionately affects African-Americans in this country. And it happened because they were poor."

[Cosmo Electrolux]

Condi is from Birmingham...she, above anyone else in Bush's cabinet, should know that race and poverty are still HUGE problems.....there is no "NEW" south......it's the same backwards, jerkwater place it's always been....

[mburbank]

Well sure, she knows it, but to go so far off message, especially in this administration, is unusual.

[Abcdxxxx]

Condie's admitting to the racial problems so the government can set up their desire to rebuild New Orleans differently.... no more shotgun shacks, that wasn't right....we need golf courses instead.

[mburbank]

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- -- Three days after Hurricane Katrina put most of New Orleans under water and with two rapidly deteriorating shelters already holding thousands, Mayor Ray Nagin issued a "desperate SOS" and urged people still in the city to flee over a Mississippi River bridge.

But some evacuees who tried that route told CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" and "News Night with Aaron Brown" that they were met by police with shotguns who refused to allow them into Gretna, the town on the other side.

The evacuees blamed the incident on racism, but Gretna's police chief said his town was in lockdown and was no better equipped to handle evacuees than New Orleans.

With food and water dwindling at the Louisiana Superdome and the city's convention center and the promise of buses unrealized, New Orleans police directed one group across the bridge toward the Mississippi's west bank -- and Gretna, said Larry Bradshaw, one of the evacuees.

"We were told by the commander at the police command post ... that we should cross that bridge, and there would be buses waiting to take us out," he said on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360."

"We walked, probably 200 people, about a two-hour trek," Tim Sheer, another evacuee, told CNN's "News Night with Aaron Brown." "We got to the top of the bridge. They stopped us with shotguns.

"We had people in wheelchairs, we had people in strollers, people on crutches, so we were a slow-moving group," said Bradshaw. "And we didn't think anything when we saw the deputies there. Then all of a sudden we heard shooting."

Gretna Police Chief Arthur Lawson, who was interviewed on CNN before Bradshaw, Sheer and another evacuee, Lorrie Beth Slonsky, said that to his knowledge, no officers fired shots near the crowd.

"We certainly will look into it," he said, "once this is over with, and we get back to a level that we can investigate it."

But the evacuees said they were very disturbed by what the officers told them about why they wouldn't be allowed to cross the bridge.

"What we were told by the deputies is that they were not going to allow another New Orleans, and they weren't going to allow a Superdome to go into their side of the bridge, Gretna," said Slonsky.

"So to us, that reeks absolute racism, since our group that was trying to cross over was women, children, predominantly African-American," she said.

Lawson said his officers did stop the group from crossing but insisted racism had no part in the decision.

"We had no preparations," he said. "You know, we're a small city on the west bank of the river. We had people being told to come over here, that we were going to have buses, we were going to have food, we were going to have water, and we were going to have shelter. And we had none.

"Our people had left. Our city was locked down and secured, for the sake of the citizens that left their valuables here to be protected by us."

The chief said he had not spoken with any of the officers involved in the incident.

More than 56 percent of Gretna's population is white, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau, and under 36 percent are black.

Some evacuees said police took food and water from a group that had camped out on the bridge.

Slonsky said the group that camped on the bridge had some food and water and felt relatively safe. But fellow evacuee Larry Bradshaw said, the police came back at dusk.

"Jumped out of his car with the gun aimed at us, screaming and cursing and yelling at us to get the blank-blank away," he said "And just, just so rabidly angry. And we tried to reason, we tried to talk. And he was just putting his gun in the face of young children and families.It said Gretna on the police car."

Asked why Gretna authorities did not allow the group into town and call for buses, Lawson said, "Who were we going to call?"

"We had no radios. We had no phones. We had no communications, as I just told you," he said. "We had not spoken to the city of New Orleans prior to or during this event. Who were we going to call? What were we going to do with thousands of people without enough water to sustain them, without enough food to sustain them, or without any shelter?"

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Let's Have an Antipoverty Caucus

Katrina and Rita offer a chance to rethink societal strategies

by Joe Klein

Posted Sunday, Sep. 25, 2005


Congressman Charles Rangel of New York, a reasonable man who sometimes goes off the deep end, indulged himself last week. "George Bush is our Bull Connor," he told the Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference, referring to the legendary Birmingham, Ala., police chief who attacked peaceful civil rights marchers with dogs and water cannons in 1963. A few minutes earlier, the entertainer Harry Belafonte had read the riot act to Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

He said Clinton's proposed commission to investigate the slow governmental response to Hurricane Katrina was "unnecessary" because "we know what caused it"—a veiled reference to white racism and Republican neglect. He said the African Americans in prison were "victims of poverty" and so were the African-American single mothers of children born out of wedlock. And then, just for fun, he added that blacks need to investigate the "ravages of the Democratic Party and see if there's anything worth salvaging."

There is a thin line between righteous and self-righteous anger. An African-American friend, well acquainted with my political impatience, once said, "Joe, if you were black, you'd be in the streets with a machine gun." And so I can sympathize with Rangel and Belafonte—to a point. White racism is the original American sin; it helped create the culture of poverty that exists in places like New Orleans' Ninth Ward. And George W. Bush's dominant Republican Party was reborn in racism, having sided with Southern segregationists in the 1960s. But the tendency of some black baby boomers—the civil rights generation—to attempt to make gains by browbeating white people and ignoring the responsibility of the "victims" themselves has been a total loser. By alienating Middle America, they have helped "ravage" the Democratic Party. Their anger is irrelevant to the questions on the table: What can we as a society do to create opportunities for the poor? And, perhaps more important, how can we regain a national sense of community?

"This is a nation that can go from shock to trance in two weeks," Senator Obama said last week. The current debate on poverty is likely to blow away by the time hurricane season ends. But Katrina and Rita offer those who actually care about poor people a chance to rethink their strategy. Certainly it is time to move beyond victimhood and race-based aggrievement to something more intelligent and inclusive. There are nearly twice as many poor white people living in the U.S. as poor blacks; the black poverty rate diminished dramatically—from 33.4% to 22.5%—during the Clinton Administration (it has risen to 24.7% under Bush); and the recent increase in poverty has been most pronounced among Hispanics. The most effective thing the Congressional Black Caucus could do to fight poverty would probably be to invite white and Hispanic legislators who have significant numbers of poor people in their districts to join its ranks and rename itself the Congressional Antipoverty Caucus. One could also argue that the only way to build a coalition to fight poverty—and preserve affirmative action—in this conservative era would be to base preferences on economic need rather than race.

People like Rangel and Belafonte might do well to listen more closely to the next generation of black leaders—people like Obama and Congressmen Harold Ford of Tennessee, Artur Davis of Alabama and Sanford Bishop of Georgia—who emphasize both the need for more money to fight poverty and the need to change the behavior patterns of the poor. "Our priority has to be with whatever works, as opposed to the conventional wisdom within our group or our party," Obama said last week, adding that liberal and conservative solutions to poverty are not mutually exclusive. "It's not either/or. It's both/and."

It was painful watching Senators Obama and Clinton, both of whom may harbor presidential ambitions, sitting there politely as Belafonte attacked their proposals and their party. Democrats have suffered from a politically correct—and rather condescending—unwillingness to speak truth to anger ever since the civil rights movement turned militant after the death of Martin Luther King Jr. The party has come to seem craven, weak and untrustworthy in the process. The only exception to this pathetic tradition was Bill Clinton's criticism of Sister Souljah's racist rap lyrics during the 1992 presidential campaign, a carefully planned gesture that was compromised by its transparency as a political tactic.

In spontaneous situations, like Belafonte's rant last week, the response is almost always paralytic silence. It would have been quite appropriate and human—and long past time—for either Clinton or Obama to push back, "Harry, do you think we'd have food stamps or Medicaid without the Democratic Party? Didn't you notice how life improved for the working poor after President Clinton passed the earned income tax credit? Tonight, when you're sipping Chablis in your New York City apartment, there will be thousands sleeping on cots in shelters. We're trying to help them. Your anger doesn't help."

[Preechr]

Poverty in America is almost entirely simple self-destruction.

Poor people smoke more, drink more, do more drugs, play the lottery more, gossip more, complain more, work less, exercise less, eat worse, save less, charge more, value education less, abuse their children more, have more children, value pre-natal care less and thus have more children with birth defects, value their own medical needs less and thus spend more time ill and or dying from easily avoidable maladies and generally do EVERY thing they can think of to make their own lives, and the lives of everyone around them, as bad as possible.

If you want to know whether or not a given person is poor, assess the nature of their actions. The higher the percentage of the things they do fall in line with the kind of actions listed above to the total of their actions, the more likely that person is either financially poor or Nikki Sixx. Poverty, at least in this country, is just a SYMPTOM of a self-destructive lifestyle... IN MOST CASES. Your life is your own damn fault, good or bad. Giving a poor, doped-up bum a nice, new home only gives him more to lose. Which he will. There's always the outside chance that having had something nice done for him will help him change his mind and start behaving more like he loves himself... I wouldn't hold my breath.

Correcting the symptoms of a problem rarely functions as a cure. That's SIMPLE common sense. If you want to argue that, please unplug your keyboard first. In fact, the logic behind our "War on Poverty" that uses welfare as a weapon is so counter-intuitive as to make me wonder why our "safety nets" aren't derided and despised by those that aren't actually poor but wish to help those that are.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

I started to read what you posted, but then I made the very sound, middle class choice to not harm myself by reading it any further.

A poor person would've most certainly read all of that. Silly bastards.

[Preechr]

Poor people make me type.

I'm why people are poor.

For the sake of the entire world, I'll shut up now.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Don't go, I miss you.

[Preechr]

I decided ignorant poor people are necessary to the world, being the fuel of Democracy and all, so I decided to keep them around by continuing to type stuff.

[AngPur]

Really, when will the Black Caucus learn that instead of asking, "how do we stop de-facto segregation?" and spending money on section 8 homes in semi-white neighborhoods to force integration, they should just lay off. Laws that require minority representation of race 'X' don't help but to encourage more division. De-facto isn't a problem, racists are. Remove the racial profiling, race fields from government forms and maybe, god-fucking-forbid, marry interracially a bit and de-facto will work itself out in a few more decades.

Of course, politicians are also known for thinking a 'long-term solution' should either be completed in one week, or conversely... never.

[El Blanco]

How about addressing the value on education amongst the poor, especially black America?

You know, like making a person with a college degree a little bit higher on the totem pole than a crack dealing high school drop who just got released from prison and dropped an album (I swear to God, the next person I see wearing a "Yayo's Free" t-shirt is gonna die screaming)?

Maybe not shunning book lurnin'?

Maybe not plopping down $50 for lottery tickets and instead just shelling out for some readers for the kids?

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Blanco, please try to stay on topic. We've already addressed the fact that poor people are retarded children, and if only they could just make smarter decisions, they would get better educations.

[ziggytrix]

so, is it all poor people that are stupid and lazy or mostly the black ones? just wondering, especially since you brought up the rapper thing.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

White po' folk make really stupid choices too, Ziggy.

I mean, it's not like cigarette companies, beer companies, fast food chains, and even the state lotto, targets certain kinds of communities. i mean, we need to hold VERY high expectations of people from lower-incomes.

But any kind of standards or expectations from multi-million dollar corporations? Well, that's socialism my friend. Love it or leave it, that's what I say.

[Preechr]

Originally Posted by KevinTheOmnivore

White po' folk make really stupid choices too, Ziggy.

I mean, it's not like cigarette companies, beer companies, fast food chains, and even the state lotto, targets certain kinds of communities. i mean, we need to hold VERY high expectations of people from lower-incomes.

But any kind of standards or expectations from multi-million dollar corporations? Well, that's socialism my friend. Love it or leave it, that's what I say.

I was thinking the exact same thing just the other day while watching my whitey-only television that decodes all the special, secret whitey-only channels that have no ads encouraging stupid decisions. I called a friend of mine to discuss the topic, but he was being targeted by an especially corporation-y corporation that had mistaken him for a minority person because he was wearing a Sean John T-shirt. Using sattelite technology provided through the uber-conservative wing of DARPA, they were forcing him to smoke crack and live in a trailer.

[Preechr]

...and what you're advocating, sir, is Fascism, not Socialism.