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According to Newsweek, white people don’t seem to think race was much of a factor in the New Orleans rescue debacle:
Twenty-two percent of all those polled say a “major reason” the response was slow was that it was not a priority because the people affected were mostly African-American. However, 47 percent of non-whites believe race was a major reason, while only 13 percent of whites believe it. And 29 percent of all those polled and 53 percent of non-whites say a major reason was that the people affected were mostly poor. (Only 20 percent of whites feel that way.)(my emphasis)
Digby reflects on the decision by the police of the (predominantly white) community of Gretna City to shoot guns over the heads of the (predominantly black) people trying to cross the only bridge to safety and drive them back:
The reason they weren’t allowed to walk out that night, of course, is simple. The police chief says it right out. They decided that saving their fully evacuated “bedroom community” from what they assumed would be “looting, pillaging and burning” by victims of the hurricane was more important than allowing people to save their own lives by walking through their town to safety up the road.Picture for a moment young women with their children, old people, families, single people gathered together in a make-shift community in the middle of chaos approaching police officers on a bridge begging for help. Picture them being white. Do you think the police would shoot over their heads and push them back? Even if they did that would they then land a helicopter in their midst in the middle of the night, not to rescue dying elderly, but to force their somewhat safe, visible make-shift community out into the pitch black anarchy of the city?
What the fuck are these people on? From Wolf Blitzer’s “they are so poor and so black” comments to the ugly attacks on the “welfare state” this whole travesty has done nothing if not exponentially underscore the racism that still pervades every scintilla of life in this country. You’d have to be blind, deaf and extraordinarily stupid to count yourself as a member of that 87%.
Paging Mr. Goldberg…
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Jane, that explicitly isn’t my point.
Go back and re-read my comments and you’ll see I repeatedly state that racism is involved. My points are multiple by now, but the essence is this: Racism is not the sole element of what’s going on.
In fact there’s so much going on my mind boggles at all the various elements determining the behavior of all the players in the Katrina crisis.
And race does not equal class.
I don’t think I’m buying your argument that if some of the cops were black there was no racism involved, John. I mean, is that really your point?
NPR’s This American Life just dedicated a show to oral accounts of people’s efforts trying to get out of NO. Worth a listen.
http://www.thislife.org/
(Scroll down to last week’s show, ‘After The Flood’)
And so was George Wallace and, at one time, Strom Thurmond. And virtually every member of the Ku Klux Klan including Robert Byrd.
But your assumption that the cops guarding the entrance into Gretna were white is still only an assumption.
Even the widely distributed description of the event by paramedics (and writers for Socialist Worker) Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky doesn’t say the Gretna cops were white (it doesn’t say they were black either).
The more I read about this, the more I’m convinced the reality of it is more nuanced than a case of simple racism. Or simple classism. Or simple anything.
And it doesn’t get any less disturbing. Or enraging.
So was Lester Maddox.
By the way, here’s an interesting insight into the administration of the city of Gretna (found via Instapundit). It turns out quite a few officials of that town have an aggressive entrepreneurial streak.
http://www.searchdice.com/Casi…..47003.html
And one more thing… Chief Lawson is a Democrat.
Just an addendum to my comment above.
The photo is small and I’m nowhere near being an expert on determining someone’s race. And even if Chief Lawson is black, I don’t think that means that racism wasn’t involved at all. It only complicates the situation.
Jane, do we know that the Gretna cops were all white? Majority white? Some black?
The Gretna Police Department has a web site at http://www.gretnapolice.com. And there on the home page is a photo of Chief Arthur S. Lawson, Jr. the very man who ordered the cops to hold back the crowds from New Orleans. I’m don’t have a DNA sample here — and I’m not going to presume anything — but this guy could be either black or white looking at his photo.
According to his biography on the site, he was born in New Orleans in 1954 and joined the Gretna Police Department in 1975. That he was born in New Orleans makes it at least as likely that he’s black as he isn’t.
My wife, who grew up in Alabama until she was 15 and then spent 10 years in New Orleans, reminds me that there are a lot of black police officers in all these towns surrounding New Orleans and that Gretna is neither rich nor a “white town” by any stretch of the imagination.
My wife, by the way, thinks he’s a black guy.
Yeah, I was speaking as a non-southerner for the average American cracker, but I suppose there is a different dynamic of imagery in the South where maybe the first thought is race. The corrolary where I live (Pac NW) is probably where white people tend to first think “Indian” and then “poor.”
I’ve noticed that I tend to think “Indian” and then “victim.” Strange how the mind works.
I really don’t know how anyone can think about white police officers firing over the head of a (mostly black) crowd and not have images of Bull Connor or the march from Selma to Montgomery flash through your mind. As citizens of the South I guarantee you it flashed through theirs.
I’d also concur that it is more of a class thing, but that race is put secondarily. I think the thoughts that go through such people’s minds are, in order: “Look at them, they are there because they are stupid/poor/don’t have the foresight to get out. And of course they are all black, big surprise.”
Jake, a regular reader of my personal blog, made the comment that he disagreed with Kenya West’s assessment of GDubya’s not caring about ‘black folks’. “It’s not black folks he doesnt’ care about,” he said “it’s poor folks.” “If your poor, Bush & Co don’t give a wit about you.” “Except of course for you vote”
I have to say I pretty much agree with him. At least as far as Bush himself is concerned.
As to racism being a factor in how the situation has been handled, I do believe the color of the majority of the victims is the ‘elephant in the room’ no one wants to acknowledge. Well that is anyone not wearing rose colored glasses.
Well, speaking of race and class, Forbes reminds us that poor blacks are not the only liability from Katrina. Don’t forget the “Diasporic” middle class: http://www.forbes.com/2005/09/…..newsletter
It’s always nice to be reminded of who the True Victims (c) are.
I think that race in the final analysis always trumps class. The people who want to look at what happened in NO as a class issue, do not want to be stigmatized by being perceived as racist. Class is determined by primarily by wealth in this culture, and secondarily by accent, education, manners and a host of other signifiers. Poor blacks lose on all counts.
Actually in the South, because of the devastation to the old planter class wrought by the Civil War, those secondary characteristics are given more value in determining class than elsewhere in the country. If you have enough of the secondary signifiers, you can get away with a thin bank account. The south also has a good bit of the old Calvinist idea that your bank account is a good indicator of how much God loves you. The Pat Robertson Cadillac Evangelicals and the Pharisee Falwells certainly think that way. They don’t worry about the eye of the needle. But race is the trump card in the south and I dare say for most of the country. It comes down to who would you want your child to marry, no matter how much money they have.
Well, no, race doesn’t equal class. To say that it does is to rob each word of its meaning and to vastly oversimplify both the American and human experience. That may make explaining society easier, but it also makes the explanation superficial and wrong.
Ezra is Ezra Klein. He’s really smart but I don’t think Ezra’s right on this one. This administration, despite some high-profile African American appointments, has done more to institutionalize racism in this country and launch an assault on poor blacks from all fronts than any in my lifetime.
David E. is right — in American class = race.
I read this book:
-’Lalita Tademy’s riveting family saga chronicles four generations of women born into slavery along the Cane River in Louisiana. It is also a tale about the blurring of racial boundaries: great-grandmother Elisabeth notices an unmistakable “bleaching of the line” as first her daughter Suzette, then her granddaughter Philomene, and finally her great-granddaughter Emily choose (or are forcibly persuaded) to bear the illegitimate offspring of the area’s white French planters. In many cases these children are loved by their fathers, and their paternity is widely acknowledged. However, neither state law nor local custom allows them to inherit wealth or property, a fact that gives Cane River much of its narrative drive’-
a few years ago and gave it to my friend who’s biracial (but pretty much “passes” for white). I don’t think she’s read it yet.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obi…..2?v=glance
David, thanks for the link. Good to see someone tell it like it is. I’m going to share it with my friends. Why do you call him Ezra?
Well Ezra just put THIS up. Essential Reading
In this country Race = Class.Poor whites can always “improve themselevs.” Back America isn’t regarded that way at all. We’re just an acoutrement, an attitude, a song or a hip-hop refrain. White is all that matters.
I’ve been screaming about this over at Ezra’s to no avail.
The only difference between Michael Jackson and M&M is that Mathers isn’t a pedophile.
JPH makes a valid point and yes it is almost never as simple as black versus white in the south. Class in the south is very important especially since the war between the states. The southern white still clings subconciously to the old south where the white man was the plantation owner or foreman and the blacks and poor white trash were slaves or sharecroppers. When reality challenges this delusion we get the Gretna like events.
To Jane’s point about poor and white being Dubya’s base in the South…yes true enough but Rove and Bush know that these people are not critical thinkers and are more inclined to vote for the guy that they believe shares their “jumped by Jesus” philosophy. As long as Dubya doesn’t embrace gays and same sex marriage and condemns sex outside of marriage and all that other born again stuff that base is solid. Bush can and is the biggest fuckup in Presidental history but that won’t make one bit of difference as long as the rubes believe he found Jesus.
There is clear proof of this in the fact that this group still voted for him after he spent his first term screwing them to the wall.
Well, let me throw another element into the mix here…
Racism obviously exists and it’s obviously persistent. But looking at this purely through the prism of race ignores the role of class in the equation.
Gretna is a relatively well integrated bedroom community. It’s 56.3-percent white and 35.5-percent black according to the 2000 census (http://www.epodunk.com/cgi-bin/popInfo.php?locIndex=3384). That’s obviously not as heavily black as New Orleans (67.3-percent African American), but it’s still a significant black population.
With a median household income of $28,065 Gretna isn’t rich but it’s slightly better off than New Orleans’ with its $27,133 median income and it’s 45.2-percent home ownership rate is slightly better than New Orleans 40.7-percent rate as well.
If you live in Gretna (and I’m basing this on a supposition — I’m not going argue this as an absolute) one of the best things you can say is that you don’t live in New Orleans. You’re slightly better than New Orleans, so to speak, with something to lose if your town became more like New Orleans.
The biggest clashes between classes isn’t between the very wealthy and the very poor — they don’t really come into contact. It’s between the adjoining classes; in this case the not-at-all-well-off and the a-little-bit-better-off. Gretna was fighting for its distinctiveness from New Orleans; its claim to betterness; its sense of worth.
Was race a reason why the Gretna cops tried to keep the refugees from New Orleans from spilling in? Yes, certainly. But it’s a more complex set of motivations than simple black vs. white.
And ultimately, under these dire circumstances the Gretna cops’ behavior was both despicable and inexcusable no matter what the motivation.
I don’t know, Fallenmonk. White + Southern poor = Bush base. Witness Florida. He knows how to buy a vote.
He doesn’t “care” about anyone. Poor blacks just don’t have anything he wants.
Jane, perhaps the only time in his life that you might have seen Lucianne’s Vaginal Spew holding a weapon would have been to protect the property rights of the good citizens of Gretna from the criminal masses of sick young children and elderly invalids trying to escape their living hell in New Orleans.
Expect a Medal of Freedom for protecting property to be awarded to the Chief of The Gretna PD alongside of BrownOut.
Did you see Real Time the other night? Maher did the most accurate inventory of the destruction of Preznit Inarticulate that I’ve seen…it went something along the lines of “since he’s been president we’ve lost three airliners, two towers, our economy, a war, and a major US city…Mr Bush, can you please leave now?”
Brilliant. For that alone, I’d buy Maher a brewski. Or six.
I agree with John and I guess by extension with Malloy. I was born and raised in the South and still live there. I cannot ignore the fact that deep down in my being there are all the things I experienced growing up and that means that in my deepest soul I am a racist as well. Like John I know this about myself and kick myself mentally when I catch it trying to control my thinking or actions. I have spent the better part of my life trying to step away from the automatic animal tendencies we all have but I still find myself having to conciously reject that kind of thinking since it is so entrenched in who I am.
On another note Wolf’s comment hints at the whole truth about some of the influences on the response to “Corrina” It is not only that the majority of victims are black but that they are poor. Bush and his ilk subconciously equate the two and I expect that if the entire population of N.Orleans had been white and poor we would have seen much the same response.
Racism is so deeply ingrained in the consciousness of most white Americans that they can not even recognize it. This is an explanation, not an excuse. Because you cheer black atheletes and George Bush has used the office of Sec. State for the house slaves does not mean that racism is finished in the US.
Liking Oreos doesn’t count either.
I agree with the Mike Malloy take on the subject: ” I’m racist as I am a white raised in the 20th Century USA, I’ m aware of the pathology, and I try the best I can to avoid any overt expression of the disease. (Paraphrased)
Nice dogs you got. I hope you got an evacuation plan for them if you are in LA.
Cheers
Fitz!