9/9/05 -- Hurricane Katrina: The race/poverty nexis

Vacation. It can make a girl lazy. I was in the air when Katrina hit, then safely ensconced in the news bubble of my parents’ suburban apartment. Now I feel free to quote one of my younger brothers about the Katrina catastrophe. “Being poor sucks.”

So many university students don’t understand how grateful they should be for the chances they have. Too many people don’t stretch themselves when it comes to the socioeconomic. God knows that I have the tendency, sometimes, to treat the poor like lepers, afraid to touch them for fear of getting some disease (never mind the reluctance spawned from the TWO middle-aged homeless men who have tried to put their arms around my shoulders and asked to be my date. Single, yes. Desperate, never). I try to reform myself, but usually that contents itself to randomly shoving ten dollars into the hands of some teenage, druggie waif once a year. (I gave fifteen to a blonde, scraggly woman who reminded me of my mother. She gave me a hug and cried on my shoulder, and all the ungrateful part of me could think was how much she needed a bath.)

The same, inner revulsion and fear that WE could end up just like THEM if we have a bad turn of luck has been projected onto the macro level in New Orleans. We have tried to find everyone to blame. Honestly, if I knew who to blame for poverty, I’d have won a Nobel prize. It’s a cocktail that no one seems to be able to cure or decipher.

I did find some articles of interest on the issues of race and poverty in the aftermath of Katrina, however.

The Washington Post sums up current feelings about race and poverty (check the Craig’s List personal at the end. You can’t make this stuff up).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/09/09/BL2005090900567.html?sub=AR

Here's a...um…a frank column blaming black people for black deaths. Includes a complaint that back people talk like Jar-Jar Binks. (An infuriating read to be sure and a reminder about there being crazy people on both sides.) While Dean gets absurb criticism for saying that race could be a factor, idiots like these are spreading messages of overgeneralized hate.
http://www.commonconservative.com/adkins/adkins090105.shtml

To be tangential, I found an ad on one of these websites advertising conservative t-shirts that I hope no reasonable conservative will be found wearing. Don’t take the conservative name in blame, you right-wing extremists. (It took me a moment to find a word that wasn’t obscene.)
http://www.cafepress.com/rightwingstuff/133383

And now for something completely different...a column about media reactions. My favorite phrase of the day comes from it. "Far from being reassuring, the sinister-looking Homeland Secuity czar Michael Chertoff possessed the mediocre hauteur of a dinner theater Voldemort." Pure column-y goodness.
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/42/on-powers.php

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Nicholas Kristof’s thought-provoking NYT Column About Poverty is below. Note the infant-death rate statistics. Those always frighten me.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/06/opinion/06kristof.html?incamp=article_popular

Finally, one of the tragic, snapshot fiascos of whoever is managing things down there (and granted, it must be a tough job, and mistakes are bound to happen) Hyatt Hotel guests are given priority to starving Superdome garbage-dwellers. In related news, in another article, I read that the toilets were so choked up these people regularly went to the bathroom in cardboard boxes. Talk about sanitary.
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-2/1125721982187540.xml&coll=1

I presume by now the whole world has seen the Kaynes West clip accusing Bush of not caring about black people. If not, you should find it. Just to see the regular newscaster’s horror at someone going off teleprompter. I have faith that y’all can google it yourselves.

Beware of dinner theater Voldemorts!