5.Sep.2005 at 1:31 pm | Sunny
Race Card Katrina
Chaos and mismanagement, not racism, killed the urban poor, sick and old in New Orleans. The media is running a rampage with ideas that hurricane Katrina turned into a catastrophe only because the afflicted were the less affluent Blacks, simply based on what “appears� on TV- hoards of suffering Blacks. But is it possible that the incident was a grand scheme to dissolute Blacks or is the race card pulled at the wrong time?
Granted that the most affected ethnic group are the African Americans, granted that the poor, sick and old with no means to get out on time are in distress, but the numbers are clearly misinterpreted by the Left to twist the arms of the Right. Here for your considerations are some straight facts:
1) Louisiana and the neighboring states had/has a disproportionate large number of African American population. Across the US, blacks make up less than 13 percent of the population, but in these states and especially in the City of New Orleans, that number was as high as 67 percent.
2) About 23.7 percent of the cities population was below poverty line, as compared to the national average of 12.5 percent. However, if this number is taken in context to Blacks alone, the national average percent of Blacks below poverty are about 29.7 percent, making 23.7 percent appear to say the least- progressive.
If we are to dissect the above facts for New Orleans, here is what we can deduce- 67 percent Blacks, with 23.7 percent below poverty, largely can be considered better than the national levels (29.7 percent below poverty).
And, if the above statement is true, even partly, then what we see on TV is not what the ideal world numbers would look like. In theory if there were 10 Americans on TV, only one of who would be Black (remember 13 percent). Since New Orleans had a high density of African Americans, you will see a high number of Blacks suffering on TV. Not because they are Black, but because they were more in number, because most African Americans made New Orleans their home ?by choice.? It is not a flawed system that set the stage for this disaster. Blacks in New Orleans were definitely better off than any other place in America- statistically at least.
This incident has been politicized to stir race empathy, if anything the tragedy is an insight into our level of preparedness, the limitation of resources, the issues with coordination/communication between different levels of the bureaucracy, and last but most importantly the devaluation of human life based a ?class system?, where the haves make it and the have-nots die.
In the end however, there are a lot more questions in my mind than there are answers, one of which that completely baffles me is- Why are there no NAACP folks on Capitol Hill complaining that there is a disparity in the number of Blacks volunteering for rescue missions? Latest estimate places this number at 1 percent Blacks. And if you think this is a whitewash, forget about it, I am blacker than most of you are.
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