07 September 2005 Blog Home : September 2005 : Permalink
If we could prosecute murder by negligence, George Bush and his cohorts would surely be thrown in the clink for years.
But that won't happen. What is happening is that poor people are being punished for the negligence of the wealthy and powerful. With no cars, they could not get out of the city, and were trapped by the hurricane. Instead of facing up to this harsh reality, people are going on about how these naughty survivors chose to be there. Last week I pointed out to someone on the train to work that no, many of the survivors had no way to get out of the city, and there was no evacuation plan. No buses. No vans. No nothing.
This was the answer I got: "Yes, but I'm sure a few people wouldn't go, anyway."
Oh, well then. Because you're sure a few people wouldn't leave when instructed to--even if they didn't have a car or anyway to get out anyway--everyone who's there deserves what they get. They must have all chosen to stay there. [...]
The bulk of the survivors and victims are Black and poor. The bulk of the people in Washington who made the cuts to FEMA, who cut the work on the levees short, and who dragged their feet on getting help to our fellow American citizens are White.
I hate defending Bush, especially when I agree that his appointees are to blame for some of the FEMA/DHS bureaucratic cock ups, but blaming Bush exclusively or primarily is wrong. Mayor Nagin (black IIRC) is the gentleman who failed to mobilize his own busses and Governor Blanco, who is white, would seem to be at least as culpable in the dithering stakes as any FEMA head. Throw in the rest of the corrupt and incompetant Louisiana/city authorities and you are goign to get a mess unless you assume that the Feds are required to protect states/cities from the (in)actions of their elected officials. Similar thoughts are here.Yes, I know it's impolitic to say such things while the suffering in the Big Easy is fresh and many cops risked their lives to save others. But now is the time to blow the whistle on the story line being repeated by rote across America: That the federal government ignored New Orleans because most of its residents are black and poor.
That narrative has all the accuracy of a historic novel: it takes two undisputed facts - the feds were slow and New Orleans is largely black and poor - and weaves in pure fiction to make the desired link.
The charge of racism-inspired foot-dragging isn't just nonsense. It's pernicious nonsense, as in destructive and malicious. You know that's a fact because loony Howard Dean, the Democratic Party boss, is now peddling it. He's joined by Jesse Jackson, who said the squalor in New Orleans "looks like the hull of a slave ship." Oh, please