Article over the coming race issues.

[Lyion]

http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/low ... 021731.asp

It is getting ugly. Not just in New Orleans, but in the debate over it. Take our poisonous partisan divide, add the finger-pointing that takes place after any calamity, then mix in noxious racial politics, and you have the formula for the coming Battle over New Orleans.

The victims in New Orleans are overwhelmingly poor and black, and it didn’t take long for that to begin to elicit charges of a kind of racism. The head of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D., Md.), said at a press conference Friday, “We cannot allow it to be said that the difference between those who lived and those who died in this great storm and flood of 2005 was nothing more than poverty, age, and skin color.”

First, this nation has been transfixed and heartbroken by the suffering of the black victims in New Orleans. It has been outraged by the acts of violence that have made their plight even more difficult. If the country is the least bit inclined to write off the misery in New Orleans as experienced by the wrong race and therefore not worth the bother, there is no evidence of it.

Sadly, poverty and age have affected who got out and who didn’t, as many of the poor and elderly didn’t have cars or the resources to evacuate. Many of these people are black, but, pace Elijah Cummings, their skin color as such had nothing to do with whether they escaped the city.

If the federal response has seemed flat-footed, does anyone believe that President Bush got on the phone with the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael Brown, and said, “Hey, Michael, let’s slow-walk this thing — we’re talking about mostly black victims here”?

Apparently some people do believe it. According to Jesse Jackson, “Many black people feel that their race, their property conditions and their voting patterns have been a factor in the response.” Voting patterns! Louisiana voted for Bush and just elected a Republican U.S. senator. Is it plausible to think Bush wanted to watch the state’s major city sink into chaos for political reasons? Not to mention that the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Ken Mehlman, has devoted his chairmanship to winning more black voters.

A professor at the University of Massachusetts, Martin Espada, told the New York Times: “We tend to think of natural disasters as somehow evenhanded, as somehow random. Yet it has always been thus: Poor people are in danger. It’s dangerous to be poor. It’s dangerous to be black. It’s dangerous to be Latino.”

To the extent that it has been made especially dangerous to be black in New Orleans, it is a product of a culture of governmental corruption and incompetence, including rotten policing, that goes deeper than any simplistic racial demagoguery can capture. Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans is black. He has been a reformer, but it would take more reform than one mayor is capable of to change New Orleans. Nagin’s predecessor, Marc Morial, was black too, and a business-as-usual politician. This summer, aides, friends, and an uncle of the former mayor were indicted on corruption charges.

In many senses, however, poverty is indeed dangerous. The root of it, more than anything else, is the breakdown of the family. Roughly 60 percent of births in New Orleans are out of wedlock. If people are stripped of the most basic social support — the two-parent family — they will be more vulnerable in countless ways, especially, one assumes, in moments of crisis like that that has befallen New Orleans. If the tableaux of suffering in the city prompts meaningful soul-searching, perhaps there can be a grand right-left bargain that includes greater attention to out-of-wedlock births from the Left in exchange for the Right’s support for more urban spending (anything is worth addressing the problem of fatherlessness).

Unfortunately, the post-catastrophe debate will probably be toxic and unhealthy, just like the oily, fetid waters of New Orleans.

[dammuzis]

yes whitey sent katrina to the poor black neighborhood

[DESX]

Personally I think its fucking great it's what those retards deserve for being 10 feet below sea level........ ok why the fuck do they go and build new orleans 10 feet below sea lvl.... why not like um...... no fucking feet below sea lvl.

[mofish]

Youre too stupid to understand why so Ill just save the keystrokes and call you a dumbass instead.

[Tuggan]

I can totally understand why some minorities may feel that way. I dont know all the specifics as to why aid wasnt given sooner...but when we can amass troops, goods, and volunteers and have them across the planet (hi indonesia) in the same ammount of time it took us to get help to people on this continent something isnt right.

[Tadpole]

http://entertainment.tv.yahoo.com/entnews/ap/20050902/112572168000.html

jesus christ. why do they always have to bitch over this stupid shit? makes me fucking sick.

[DESX]

Youre too stupid to understand why so Ill just save the keystrokes and call you a dumbass instead.

Lol please enlighten me. Not exactly sure why they didnt just go a little more inland made the city and build a port. Or maybe is it because they have natural leeves which makes it alright for them to build their? The highest point in the city is only 6 feet above sea level. Not to mention coastal erosion, residential development, and commercial development was soaring so it made that area even more vulnerable so... yeah please tell me why sir dumbfuck.

[Arlos]

You DO know that the land has been sinking steadily since the city was founded there, yes? That when it was built it was NOT below sea level? Try doing just a TINY bit of research before calling people dumbasses, or it makes you look like a grade-A prize-winning asshat.

-Arlos

[DESX]

You DO know that the land has been sinking steadily since the city was founded there, yes? That when it was built it was NOT below sea level? Try doing just a TINY bit of research before calling people dumbasses, or it makes you look like a grade-A prize-winning asshat.

-Arlos

Hmmm well damn if you do a little more research you will see that in 1718 it was founded by the french and it was a very rare piece of land that was surrounded by flood prone banks of the lower mississippi. so shit since we bought lousiana in 1802 their has been around 202 years to fix this problem so, yes I dont really care if their whole city is fucking destroyed they knew this shit for 287 years that it was flood prone.

Try doing just a TINY bit of research before calling people dumbasses, or it makes you look like a grade-A prize-winning asshat.

Youre too stupid to understand why so Ill just save the keystrokes and call you a dumbass instead.

Might wanna direct that to him also.

[brinstar]

ya actually the bush administration slashed funding to the engineering corps division assigned to figure out how to protect NOLA from floods and category five hurricanes by over 60%

less than six months ago

[Themosticles]

Yea and because of that everything went wrong...fucking idiot. That research you're alluding too wouldn't even have been finished until what, 2008? Right...

[Scoota McGee]

In happier news, guess what company won the no-bid contract to rebuild after Katrina

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/3335685

[Captain Insano]

I would like to step in and say that I don't give a shit about what jesse jackson or black people in general think about the progress or lack thereof in the efforts to rebuild New Orleans.


If black people want white people to start caring about what they think, try to stop acting like crime committing monkey robots.

[Minrott]

Maybe, just maybe, the reason most of the victims are the poor black people is because all the poor white people did what they were told and fucking left town.

[Scoota McGee]

Or maybe when the Mayor proclaimed all citizens needed to evacuate the city, he should have mobilized school busses and any other buses the city had access to (Which are now underwater) and provided his impoverished citizens the means to move further inland. The fact is he did nothing, their was no real preparation made by the city other than pointing citizens to the Superdome... which was unprepared logistically to server as a shelter.

The city government did not plan effectively, and is now complaining because the federal government didn't do a better job of planning for imminent failure of the local governance to prepare for the situation. I'm personally amazed that we can have troops and equipment mobilized and moving supplies in and people out of a disaster as bad as New Orleans is. The infrastructure is in ruins, there is no power or utilities of any kind, and not only is the city flooded... it's below sea level. And some of the “Rescue-es” are far less than appreciative.

All the pointing of fingers is pathetic and only serves to divide people, increase tension and hostility which will make emergency operations that much more difficult... Which makes for good sound bites and blurbs that keep all the TV zombies plugged into.

My evil company has had about a dozen IT volunteers down there since Monday and has three rapid deployment “Network in a box” satellite kits on the ground and unlinked that are providing ip-phones and email to 900 nodes (300 per site) so people can communicate to loved ones. All of this has been done before any negotiation of compensation. How about knock off the Bush bashing, get off your ass and do something to help the situation.

[Lyion]

Lets see, they knew about the Hurricane seven days ahead of time. What did the Mayor do during that time?

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u ... 1109012015

Ah yes, wait and scream for the Feds to take care of everything. Right.

[brinstar]

Yea and because of that everything went wrong...fucking idiot. That research you're alluding too wouldn't even have been finished until what, 2008? Right...

step off themo

did i say it would have made a difference? no.

i pointed it out because it seems to me it's a pretty bad place to trim the budget, especially now that we know just how unprepared NOLA really was

[Diekan]

I KNEW this was going to turn into a racial issue. People must not fully understand the gravity of the situation. It wasn’t just NO that got hit… there was also Mobile and Biloxi. Three major cities – two of which were completely destroyed and one which is some 80% under water (twenty feet in some areas) and burning… that’s not to mention the dozens of small towns and parishes that were also completely obliterated. Did you all know that 75% of Mississippi had no power?

People need to understand that 'we' didn’t just sit back and do nothing. It takes time to mobilize and move to the location. Yeah, I agree that the military should have been called upon to have started air dropping food and water on day two – there’s no excuse for that. But, over all, when you’re talking about three states, three major cities and countless towns… thousands of people… you can’t save everyone and do everything on one day, nor can you be realistic and expect help to arrive in total force in hours. Four days is NOT that long of a time period.

[Tuggan]

man, i can get to new orleans in a day and thats from michigan. they had pleanty of warning to get themselves ready and be on the spot as soon as the storm had passed. everyone knew it was going to devistate the gulf coast. 4 days is far too long, people should not be dying on the streets of this country from dehydration and starvation. people shouldnt have to be wading in their own wastes. people shouldnt be sitting next to dead bodies in the street. were supposed to be better than that.

[Lyion]

The coast guard was there immediately, Tuggan. The troops couldnt GET to most of N.O. as the city is underwater and everyone was told to evacuate.

Mobilizing and rescuing isnt a matter of getting in your car and driving. They need to muster. Move supplies, figure where they are going, and as somebody pointed out, which you missed there is a LARGE area of devastation. If they just rushed in, they would be part of the problem, and not part of the solution.

The thing is people do not comprehend the bigger picture and just say idiot partisan things immediately. W signed the relief bill immediately. He put the ball in motion, but he doesn't run guard units personally or fly helicopter missions.

The local and state governments there dropped the ball. They were not at all ready and the setup there was terrible as all they did was blame the feds for THEIR states problems.

[KILL]

Lets see, they knew about the Hurricane seven days ahead of time. What did the Mayor do during that time?

it had a projected path towards the FL panhandle.

if i remember right, NO wasnt on target until like 2-3 days before landfall.

just sayin.

[Tuggan]

im not point fingers at anyone. im not blaming the republican party or gwb, im not blaming the gov of la, nor the mayor or new orleans. i dont care about any of that. point is i had been hearin about fucking hurricane katrina for like a week, everyone in the country KNEW it was going to hit somewhere. everyone KNEW it had picked up a great deal of strength when it hit the warm gulf waters. everyone KNEW the shit was going to hit the fan no matter where it touched land. nobody did jack shit about it, and now we got a situation going on that should have never happened in a country like ours.


im not dumb enough to think its as simple as hoppin into your car and driving, i was only using myself as an example. however when you get weeks notice that its coming, you ought to have the resources prepared and good to go asap. if people can get out, people can come in. especially military. we have the man power and resources, we just have morons running the show.

[Captain Insano]

Hahha I just thought about something funny...

Black people were stupid enough to settle en masse in a city surrounded by water and a city that was sinking... lol everyone knows black people can't swim.

[mappatazee]

Larger and larger sectors of the population have no form of organization and no visible, contructive way of reacting, so they pursue the available options, which are often violent. To a large extent, those are the options that are encouraged in the popular culture.-1994

[Zanchief]

Why didn't Bush just pray to move the Hurricane?

I heard he has communications with the big guy everyday.