Originally posted by stinkhorn
reply to post by americandingbat
You are talking about the chocolate city mayor right? Naggins, the brilliant one?
Looks to me like he tried to kill alot of black people off by keeping them in the city, is that the racisim you mean? Or do you mean George Bush?
Sorry, I didn't watch the video. Did I miss anything?
To clarify: yes, I meant the (black) mayor of NO. Yes, I meant George Bush. Because they are both part of the
system which is inherently racist and
classist. By classist, I mean biased against those of any color, ethnicity, language, religion, whatever, who do not have equal access to the
tools of power in our society.
Let me say this again: in my opinion, what the video posted by KaginD exposed was not racism at the individual level. That is present also, as is
brutally clear in this current presidential campaign. But what was shown in the video is that those with the fewest resources
are not treated the
same as the rest of us.
Did you notice how many of the people in the Superdome were part of family units, usually involving both young children and the elderly or infirm?
People were taking care of their own, as you would no doubt want. But then they were locked into that building for five days with no food no water no
toilet facilities
and no one telling them anything.
They assumed, as we would all assume, that help would be coming. And it didn't come, and it didn't come, and it didn't come, and it didn't come.
And no one gave any explanation for why there was no help, or projected a timeframe for when there might be help.
That would not have happened if the people in the Superdome had been well-off.
Do you really think it even seemed possible to the people in the Superdome that the federal government
did not know they existed? When there
are disasters on the other side of the globe, we see news stories about villages there. These were Americans, in a great American city, and the
government was more worried about covering their butts for not having strengthened the levees than getting them water, or at least telling them how
long they might have to wait.
This is not, to my mind, about any individual racist, but about systemic neglect of the least powerful.
Oh, and as far as the "everyone is a racist" argument goes – not so much. My "tribe" as you put it, in the case of catastrophic natural
disaster, would probably be the very much mixed-racial apartment building that I live in. I would be reliant on and relied on by a mix of blacks,
whites, Mexicans, Ecuadorans, and Koreans. That may seem unthinkable to you, but it's what my life looks like.