What will you believe to be true about poor black people and why? This is the meaty question at the heart of a new storm brewing over what people purportedly knew about the situation on the ground in New Orleans. It comes as no surprise.
I have often been asked if I think America is a racist nation. I suppose the answer has to be yes, otherwise nobody would ask such a patently offensive question. But determining the degree of racism and what exactly that means is a science that by and large the public has abandoned. So just as the majority of Americans can't tell whether the circumference of the globe is closer to to 25,000 miles or 250,000 miles, a lot of us don't know crap about racism. All we know is "I'm not racist, yes racism does exist, but not as much as Jesse Jackson says". Bloody brilliant.
I think that the blogosphere, spearheaded by Dean Esmay whose righteous indignation I find admirable, can nail down some of the perpetrators. We want to know who participated in arguing based upon the stories of anarchy that surrounded the Superdome. I think that would be relatively easy to do - follow the trail of wags who were knocking Nagin. That would be my strategy. After all, we do have search engines for this type of thing.
Since I've already picked a nemesis for what it's worth, I refer you to Junkyard Blog, who thought it would be more appropriate to call New Orleans 'Mogadishu'.
I've already said:
America has, unwillingly to be sure, looked at black poverty and squalor dead in the face, longer than anybody ever wanted to - for weeks on end. This isn't the OJ Simpson trial, this isn't about Rodney King, it's about destitute black faces on the air 24/7. Enough so that just about everybody freaked out and said something stupid. From Barbara Bush, to Kanye West to Wolf Blitzer to Randall Robinson, the gaffes just gushed. Why? Because nobody knew how to handle a black catastrophe - which is poor black people taking center stage in America's living room.
But let's not mince words. New Orleans is a black vs white town. I was there this spring and all over the news was how clubs in the Quarter were getting sued for racial profiling. In addition to that, there is the kind of black poverty in New Orleans that defies cvility. It's very easy to take a wrong turn off the avenue and wind up in the third world, and everybody knows it. I'm talking dirt streets and standing water in the middle of the summer. There is a not-insignificant portion of New Orleans that a lot of people are glad to see washed into oblivion. But the people who lived there are now souls to be saved. Not everybody is willing to be charitable. Considering that disaster tends to bring out the best in people, what we haven't seen is the daily ugliness of racial New Orleans.
Outside of the human catastrophe, there are people whose interests it serves to highlight and exaggerate any situation that dehumanizes blackfolks. That's Class Three racism to be sure, but in this situation it is particularly ugly.
I say go get 'em Dean.
Recent Comments