| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"maff" |
| Date: |
05 Sep 2005 08:38:29 AM |
| Object: |
OT: Left to sink or swim |
Left to sink or swim
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1562649,00.html
Tragic events in New Orleans have laid bare America's bigotry and
exposed the lie of equal opportunity
Gary Younge
Monday September 5, 2005
The Guardian
'Stuff happens," said the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, when
called to respond to the looting taking place in Baghdad after the
American invasion. "But in terms of what's going on in that country, it
is a fundamental misunderstanding to see those images over and over and
over again of some boy walking out with a vase and say, 'Oh, my
goodness, you didn't have a plan' ... It's untidy, and freedom's
untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and
do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful
things, and that's what's going to happen here."
Gary Younge
http://tinyurl.com/25fkh
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/59db27ad3617e2e3
African Americans
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/64743d657576b841
.
|
|
| User: "stoney" |
|
| Title: Re: OT: Left to sink or swim |
09 Sep 2005 02:51:16 AM |
|
|
On 5 Sep 2005 01:38:29 -0700, "maff" <maff91@yahoo.com> wrote:
Left to sink or swim
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1562649,00.html
Tragic events in New Orleans have laid bare America's bigotry and
exposed the lie of equal opportunity
Gary Younge
Monday September 5, 2005
The Guardian
'Stuff happens," said the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, when
called to respond to the looting taking place in Baghdad after the
American invasion. "But in terms of what's going on in that country, it
is a fundamental misunderstanding to see those images over and over and
over again of some boy walking out with a vase and say, 'Oh, my
goodness, you didn't have a plan' ... It's untidy, and freedom's
untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and
do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful
things, and that's what's going to happen here."
The official response to the looting in New Orleans last week was,
however, quite different. The images were not of "newly liberated
Iraqis" making away with precious artefacts, but desperate
African-Americans in a devastated urban area, most of whom are making
off with nappies, bottled water and food.
So these are not scenes of freedom at work but anarchy to be
suppressed. "These troops are battle-tested. They have M-16s and are
locked and loaded," said the Democrat governor of Louisiana, Kathleen
Blanco. "These troops know how to shoot and kill, and I expect they
will."
Events on the Gulf coast following Hurricane Katrina have been a
metaphor for race in the US. The predominantly black population of New
Orleans, along with a sizeable number of poor whites, was left to sink
or swim. The bulging banks of the Mississippi momentarily washed away
the racial divisions that appeared so permanent, not in a common cause
but a common condition - poverty.
Under-resourced and without support, those who remained afloat had to
hustle to survive. The ad hoc means they created to defend and govern
themselves under such extreme adversity were, inevitably,
dysfunctional. Their plight was not understood as part of a broader,
societal crisis but misunderstood as a problem apart from that crisis.
Eviscerated from context, they could then be branded as a lawless,
amoral and indigent bunch of people who can't get it together because
they are in the grip of pathology.
Katrina did not create this racist image of African-Americans - it has
simply laid bare its ahistorical bigotry, and in so doing exposed the
lie of equal opportunity in the US. A basic understanding of human
nature suggests everyone in New Orleans wanted to survive and escape.
A basic understanding of American economics and history shows that,
despite all the rhetoric, wealth - not hard work or personal sacrifice
- is the most decisive factor in who succeeds.
In that sense, Katrina has been a disaster for the poor for the same
reason that President Bush's social security proposals and economic
policies have been. It was the result of small government - an
inadequate, privatised response to a massive public problem. And if
there was ever any bewilderment about why African-Americans reject
such an agenda so comprehensively at every election, then this was
why.
"No one would have checked on a lot of the black people in these
parishes while the sun shined," Mayor Milton Tutwiler of Winstonville,
Mississippi, told the New York Times. "So am I surprised that no one
has come to help us now? No."
The fact that the vast majority of those who remained in town were
black was not an accident. Katrina did not go out of its way to affect
black people. It destroyed almost everything in its path. But the poor
were disproportionately affected because they were least able to
escape its path and to endure its wrath. They are more likely to have
bad housing and less likely to have cars. Many had to work until the
last moment and few have the money to pay for a hotel out of town.
Nature does not discriminate, but people do. For reasons that are
particularly resonant in the south, where this year African-Americans
celebrated the 40th anniversary of legislation protecting their right
to vote, black people are disproportionately represented among the
poor. Two-thirds of New Orleans is African-American, a quarter of whom
live in poverty.
In the Lower Ninth Ward area, which was inundated by the floodwaters,
more than 98% of the residents are black and more than a third live in
poverty. In other words, their race and their class are so closely
intertwined that to try to understand either separately is tantamount
to misunderstanding both entirely.
"Negro poverty is not white poverty," explained President Lyndon
Johnson in a speech to Howard University in 1965. "Many of its causes
and many of its cures are the same. But there are differences - deep,
corrosive, obstinate differences, radiating painful roots into the
community and into the family and the nature of the individual. These
differences are not racial differences. They are solely and simply the
consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice and present
prejudice. They are anguishing to observe. For the negro they are a
constant reminder of oppression."
Daily scenes of thousands of African-Americans being told to be
patient even as they died; their children wailing as they stood
stranded and dehydrated on highways; their old perishing as they
festered in filthy homes full of faeces; their dead left to rot in the
street - it was a reminder too many for some.
By Friday night, rapper Kanye West had finally had enough. On a live
NBC television special to raise funds for the victims, he lashed out.
"I've tried to turn away from the TV because it's too hard to watch,"
he said. "Bush doesn't care about black people. It's been five days
[waiting for help] because most of the people are black. America is
set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off, as slow
as possible."
While West's comments expressed a blatant truth for all with eyes to
see, to some they were more outrageous than watching thousands of
people dying live on television from neglect in the wealthiest country
in the world. NBC made it clear he had stepped off the reservation.
"Kanye West departed from the scripted comments that were prepared for
him, and his opinions in no way represent the views of the networks.
It would be most unfortunate if the efforts of the artists who
participated tonight and the generosity of millions of Americans who
are helping those in need are overshadowed by one person's opinion."
The fact that this person's opinion, shared by so many, explains why
those in need need so much help is, it seems, irrelevant. Perhaps NBC
executives should have read that black radical magazine Time last
week, where West graces the cover. The title? "Why you can't ignore
Kanye; more GQ than gangsta, Kanye West is challenging the way rap
thinks about race and class."
g.younge@guardian.co.uk
--
Contempt of Congress meter reading-offscale.
Hello, theocracy with a fundamentalist US Supreme
Court who will ensure church and state are joined
at the hip like clergy and altar boys.
America 1776-Jan 2001 RIP
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president
represents, more and more closely, the inner soul
of the people. On some great and glorious day the
plain folks of the land will reach their heart's
desire at last and the White House will be adorned
by a downright moron." --- H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
Religion is the original war crime.
-Michelle Malkin (Feb 26, 2005)
.
|
|
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
