Why does this have to turn into a race issue?

People are rubbing this in bush's face, especaily the news papers in the UK, they all are very critical of the bush administrating unless MSNBC was full of bull crap about it. People are using this to Criticize the Bush administration to death.

This is really sad... It was not his fault he did what he could. The disaster was a result of too many people not taking charge of the situation not soon enough. We shouldn't be playing this pointing the finger game. This could have been prevented long before hand if the city would of got funding for new levees (thats were bush and presidents before him screwed up in my opinion)

If I were the Mayor/Governor of new Orleans I would have issued martial law and made a mandatory evacuation I would then have the national guard take the people by force from there homes loaded them on planes and buses and taken them out of the city to a pre-arranged refuge camps. If the mayor did that it could have saved a lot of lives and speared the city from damage and looters.

There were also many white people that needed to be rescued and they were evacuated the same way the African Americans were, with the exception of tourist. So tell me whats next will the tabloids tell you they made the African Americans sit in the back of the bus?

Don't believe every thing you read, this is a tragedy not a blaming game.

[edit on 4-9-2005 by iksmodnad]

The UK has always been critical of bush, but IMO they need to sweep their own doorstep, They covered up the murder of that guy on the subway. Height of Hypocrisy

While most of the hurricane victims in Louisiana are black, no one seems to notice that most of the hurricane victims in Mississippi and Alabama are white. And their help from the state and federal governments are arriving even slower than to those in Louisiana, since New Orleans is getting all the attention right now.

I do consider this a race issue, because if help was there for the blacks the day before yesterday, it's automatically because it's the white mans fault.

OH WAIT... who are most of the the rescuers risking their lives... being shot at, attacked, the danger of drowning themselves, to help the "poor" black folks?? WHITE PEOPLE... yea, that's right and I said it!! I am sick of this BS that the balck "community" automatically goes for the race card when something doesn't go there way!!

Yes, I am white, I live in the city and a majority of my friends are black, and I can tell you that some of them still think that deep down inside, I am racist, that in itself is racist! My friends grew up being taught to hate the police, and white people, that all white people and police are raciist and will do anything to ruin a black person. That is some sick sh!t. This comes from parents that can't let the 50's and 60's go, or have had a run in with the law in the past. My one friend thinks that the police arrested his dad because he was black and they had nothing better to do... he SINCERELY BELIEVES THIS!! He didn't consider that his dad was selling crack in the neighborhood, and didn't think that his dad was doing anything wrong. It is totally sick, most of the black community believes that they are above the law, and no matter what they do that is illegal, thay think that the police arrest them only because they are black.

A poster perviously posted that blacks are self destructive and are basically destroying themselves. IT IS TRUE!!! I HAVE SEEN IT FIRST HAND!!! My friend was driving me home. We had went out and I had too much to drink, so I tossed him the keys. He was doing 75mph in a 35mph zone. He gets zapped by the police radar, and the lights and sirens come on. He wanted to out run the police. I told him if he tried to and we survived, they would be arresting me for murder. So he pulled over. The officer was cool, asked the usual question..."Do you know why I pulled you over?" My friend start immediatly with the pissy tone of voice and attitude. THe officer said "Well you were doing 75 and this is a 35 zone, what's the rush?" A simple question, most people "whites" would answer soemthing like "No rush officer, I just didn't notice the sign" or "I just wasn't paying attention" or "it's 2am and there is nothing on this road" or be a little creative like I have "I have to pee REALLY bad", but no, this is what my friend said under his breath... "To get away from you" HOLY SCHNIKES, it's like he was asking for trouble! The office just looked at him with the "WTF" look on his face. He asked for his liscense and I got out the car registration, and he all but through them at the officer. The officer came back and said since his driving record was clean and he was driving me home, he would just let him off with a warning. THe officer said "Just keep it slow", as soon as he was back in his car, my friend started with the whole "he only pulled me over because I'm black", I told him..."dude, it's past 2am, he can't tell what color you are!". He was going off about "that f-ing pig" "...only because I'm black" "damn cracker b!tch"...blah blah blah. Even when I was sober, I could not get it through his head that doing 40mph over the speed limit is illegal, and that he would have gotten pulled over, no matter what color her was. His reply..."MAN, anything to keep the black man down!"

Are y'all getting the picture yet. It is horrible what has happened in the south, and yes, someone or ones dropped the ball, but it was NOT done intentionally, and it was not done by Bush. Those of you who think it's his fault are most likely the type that actually would blame him for creating the hurricane itself. In your eyes, Bush can do no right, he could cure cancer, aids, poverty, and bring world peace and he would (in your eyes) still be a wretch. No offence but it is your type of thought that makes things worse not better.

Answer me this... if the majority of the N.O. population is black, wouldn't it go to figure that most of the people left behind as well as rescued would be black. It just looks like it could be costrued as racism becasue the majority of the victims are black.

Don't you get it, if the polulation was 100% black, and 98% of the population was rescued, people would still be crying racism because not all of the blacks had been rescued.

UGH, it just burns me, the ignorance of shallow, knee-jerk people.

Amen to that.

I think racism was a factor just not in the way people are making it out. In my opinion this has less to do with institutional racism now then with the institutional racism of a generation ago. I don't think all those black people would be living in the squalor they are now if they had fair opportunities to advance in the past. I know it doesnt have the dramatic power of shouting "Bush us a racist" fgrom the rooftops but I think its closer to confirmable reality then pure conjecture.

I don't know...
All I can say is that no matter what the whole has got in me feeling preety damn impotent and useless. Not to mention depressed.

I think it's pretty obvious - the Hurrican Katrina is a racist. It totally didn't affect white people.

Perhaps the true racism is against the white Americans that are not getting the news coverage the black Americans are, because they are white?

I'll agree with you that New Orleans is getting all the attention. Of course they are, the news agencies pretty much made that happened, never mind the other 89,999,927 square miles of devastation. They will report from the worst places and people they can find, primarily for continuity purposes and ratings.

It's also becoming dead obvious from watching the news that racism is a hot-button issue that gets ratings - thus the media pedals this issue as much as they possibly can. Activists also realize that they can get media airplay if they start playing on race, which just perpetuates the cycle.

I've been trying to avoid this topic for a while because it's going no where. Is it a race issue? I don't know.

However, this video clip does not seem to help. I want to know what was going through the reporters mind when he said, ".....so many of these people, almost all of them that we see are so poor and they are so black..."

Please... this isn't denial, it's the Mississippi. There is no fantasy on my end, there is just plain old boring common sense. I'm far from defensive regarding this.



Bull#. These people were rescured on what, day five? Day six? How many tens of thousands were rescued before them? How many blacks were rescued before them? 20,000? 25,000? Do you even know the population percentages based on race for the two most effected areas? I do, I went to the Population Reference Bureau and looked it up. In Orleans Parish, LA there are 125,591 whites and 302,041 blacks; in Harrison Country, MS there are 138,692 whites and 39,984 blacks.

So, the two worst effected areas consists of 264,283 whites and 342,025 blacks -- 77,742 is not as much of a disparity as you assumed I bet? Lets enlarge the area to include both Louisiana and Mississippi: population of LA, 4,338,020 (total white:2,799,224 - total black:1,422,273), total population of MS 2,824,637 (total white:1,746,099 - total black:1,033,809). That's 4.53 million whites and 2.45 million blacks. (Or, more accurately, 6.98 million Americans.)

Holy smokes, it looks like there are 2 million more whites than blacks in these two states. I guess now the racial card is making even less sense. Could it be a poverty issue and not a racial issue? Well, lets look at that as well. Percentage of population living below poverty line: The national poverty rate for 2004 is 12.7% (up from 12.3% in 2003). (source)

Individuals Below Poverty Line: LA 19.4%, Orleans Parish LA 23.2% - MS 19.9%, Harrison Cty MS 13.1%.
Families Below Poverty Line: LA 14.9%, Orleans Parish LA 14.5% - MS 16%, Harrison Cty MS 11.6%

From those numbers it appears that there are a lot more individuals at or below the poverty line in New Orleans. There also appears to be a higher number of families in this area that are below the poverty line when compared to the entire USA. But what number is 23.2%? Well, around 103,000 people living in New Orleans are at or below the poverty line. Does that mean they're being ignored or abandoned by the government because they're poor? No, I don't think so. By that logic the federal government shouldn't have already released $10.5 billion in aid, they should have spend $10 billion fixing the oil refineries and left the aid up to the Red Cross and other charities.

I think they're being rescued as fast as they can be rescued. Ground travel is almost impossible (still) over a huge area.


Air rescue is hindered by many power lines and many other near invisible obsticles.




It was theft and looting? It was liberating resources for survival. They didn't take any TV's they didn't take any weapons from a gun store, they took some antibiotics and admitted to taking antiboitics from the store they pointedly named -- sounds to me like people getting their hands on some important materials in a desperate time of need. I wouldn't doubt some of them could send the store's head office their credit card to cover the costs of what they took. I completley doubt those that looted guns and televisions want anyone knowing who they are, nor would they freely admit to taking something (or "looting" something) like those in that hotel freely admitted to. There is a huge difference and it has nothing to do with race.



Do you truely think that the food packets dropped in Iraq or Afghanistan were delivered on 24-48 hours notice? Do you actually think that there was not months of planning beforehand? Do you sincerely believe that there should be a warehouse with over ten million food packets ready to go on a moment's notice, complete with aircraft on standby to deliver them, in the USA? Who would pay for such a thing? Is there such a thing in Canada? The UK? France? Germany? Japan? Australia? China? How often would those food packets have to be thrown out and replaced?

Did you know?

Feeding – The Red Cross is working closely with several partners, including the Southern Baptist Convention, the Adventists and Second Harvest to provide emergency food to survivors and responders. In coordination with the Southern Baptists, preparations are underway to serve nearly 500,000 hot meals each day.

Nearly 137,600 meals have been served in the last 24 hours.

-=-=-

Are you beginning to grasp the size of what would be required to be "prepared" for such a disaster?

The number of food packets dropped in Afghanistan ($320 million worth of aid of which around 10% was food drops over the span of 24 months) and Iraq is not as many as you have been led to believe. It was as much a publicity stunt to distract Americans at home from the reality of troop deaths as it was to actually feed anyone.

Could the US military have dropped food packets on New Orleans and surrounding area? Yes, they probably could have. Did the military have these drop packets available to drop? It doesn't appear that they did or they more than likely would have (and they couldn't run out to WalMart and pick up a million of them over night).

But wait, maybe they did bring food and supplies to New Orleans. Or perhaps the 17.1 million MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), 5 million pounds of ice and 369 generators dispatched on 1800 trucks by the Department of Transportation don't count?



That is a fairly simple answer inside a complex problem, one you'd know if you followed your news closer. FEMA was absorbed by the office of Homeland Defense. FEMA's budget was cut, and many of it's departments were eliminated (including parts of it's disaster response). The push to create a "safer homeland" free from terrorism (or close to it) came with a cost. Other less demanding issues were not as well funded and in some cases not given the level of importance they should have been given. The administrators and officials inside FEMA have been screaming bloody murder over their budget cuts and department eliminations for more than three years. Didn't you know this?

But wait, isn't this (ATS) the place where so many people claim FEMA is some sort of nasty government black ops group and not actually an organization that responds to emergencies such as a national disaster? I guess some people here sure have egg on their faces now...

FEMA isn't touted as anything elite (at least outside of conspiracy groups it's not). It's a group of government and civilian employees who respond to disasters within the USA and her territories. If you knew anyone that had been helped by FEMA in the past you'd know that they're a pretty darn nice thing to have when you need it most. FEMA has been spending over $500 million dollars a day in their Katrina disaster response efforts (does that mean their $2.5 billion budget ran out a couple days ago?). At that spending rate, how long will the additional $10 billion already sent by Washington last? (20 days? A month?)



Actually, mother nature has brought less than 2% of the nation to it's knees, and will directly effect the other 98% through increased gas prices and possibly increased taxes (mind you the USA loves to simply run in debt mode so it might not effect tax payers for a generation or two). It would take a lot more than a hurricane to bring the US to it's knees. This disaster will only make the US stronger; it will only serve to make the governments (local, state and federal) more prepared for future disasters and it will serve to teach the citizens of the US to be better prepared. The US isn't smashed into 3rd world status, a few cities in two states are. That can and will be fixed, you don't give Americans enough credit.

The Bush Administration, however, is found sorely lacking in the way they managed FEMA and the Department of Homeland Defence. That is a fact that nobody can dispute.

No, the scope of this disaster is directly a result of the Bush Administration's cutting funding to FEMA and redirecting funds from the Corps away from levee reconstruction/construction and wetlands preservation towards the war in Iraq. Every mile of wetlands reduces a hurricane surge by 1 meter. Bush opened the doors to commercial development on wetlands previously preserved by his father George Bush Sr. and then again by Bill Clinton.

The disaster would most likely have been considerably less had he not done the above things. (Even FEMA managers and the former head of FEMA have said so). Now the administration gets to play the catch up game where the cost is tenfold monitarily (or more) and as of yet uncountable reputation / opinion wise.

It seems that aspects of it are racial issues. I'm certain that the media
is desperately scrambling for images and video of white
wrongdoers. Why so little luck so far? Hmmmm....

Well at least they've
got the callous white power structure to blame for an incompetent
response, so that will serve as well, for now...
When you see people who have looted guns, electronics,
liquor, (not to mention assaults, rapes, threatening and shooting
at potential rescuers) it says volumes about the content of thier character.
Instead of using the crutch of learned helplessness as thier
excuse and reverting to barbarism, why don't these people
channel all that energy into something constructive?
It seems to me the simple answer is that in terms of group dynamics,
blacks will be black. Take away any semblance of order (usually
provided by whites) and wherever they are in the majority rapidly
descends into third world chaos. It's observable anywhere in the world.

One has to consider how different the reactions to wretched
circumstances so many Asian tsunami victims were from so many of
the black hurricane victims and wonder.....

I guess the truth is racism.

That was the new's (and there idiot reporters) not the government the people actualy rescuing people.

I don't think it is a race issue. It is an economic class issue. The vast majority of people trapped in that hell hole are poor. For various reasons that don't matter. And because this happened in New Orleans, most of these poor people happen to be black. New Orleans has affluent black people too, or did, and I'd bet most or all of them got out safely.

If you transplanted this disaster to different parts of the country, these same pictures would be of white, brown, native, Asian, you name it, poor people.

And the response, or miserable lack of one, would have been the same. Poor people are ignored by this government, although you'd think they must love them, they are creating so many (poverty rates up 5 years in a row now).

So the spin the 'administration' is putting out follows their normal pattern: it is technically true... these people were not abandoned because they are black, they were abandoned because they are poor. And as with most spin from these clowns, any degree of close scrutiny at all exposes the lies.

You're asking, "What does that mean"? It means that the media is focusing on the area with what will be the largest body count. That's what they do, for their ratings. It just so happens that that area is predominantly Black.

Time for a reality check Jeremiah it is obvious you do not what you are talking about.

Lets take a look at the two key states

Louisana
Population, 2003 estimate 4,496,334

White persons, percent, 2000 (a) 63.9%

Black or African American persons, percent, 2000 (a) 32.5%

quickfacts.census.gov...

Mississippi
Population, 2003 estimate 2,881,281

White persons, percent, 2000 (a) 61.4%

Black or African American persons, percent, 2000 (a) 36.3%

quickfacts.census.gov...

Now what was that you were saying it did not affect any White People.

Exactly Intrepid the demographics in the immediate NO area has a much higher percentage of blacks which is normal for a large city, however when you take the two states as a whole which were affected you find that more whites were affected them blacks in the two state area by two to one. That is a rough estimate. See figures in my post above.

[edit on 9/5/2005 by shots]

I think he was being sarcastic dude.

I know that it was a reporter, and I'm glad that it wasn't a government official. What I find odd is the fact that he said, "...they are so black..."

they are as black as they can get. if Katrina hit somewhere that is dominantly white and u see people screaming for help recorded by aerial helos reporters be saying they are so white. why did so many whites have to die here.