Who is Suffering?
Yesterday afternoon a co-worker who sits next to me was watching some of the video shot at the New Orleans Convention Center on his computer. I was tempted to watch it with him, but just listening to the audio was difficult enough. I can't bring myself to watch any of the TV coverage of Katrina's aftermath; reading about it online and seeing the photos is difficult enough for me.
The miserable situation at the Convention Center over the last several days raises many questions that government officials at the local, state, and federal level will be obliged to eventually answer. Victims of Katrina were either brought or told to go to the Convention Center and were promised that aid would be forthcoming. Ironically, those in the Convention Center have esentially been left for dead; life inside its walls has become a horrific, miserable struggle to merely survive that most of us would not believe could exist in the United States today.
We should all question why the poorest, more destitute residents of New Orleans were the ones made to disproportionately suffer in Katrina's wake. While all residents were asked to evacuate, so many in New Orleans are too poor to afford a car, much less a plane ticket...even those who own cars may not have had enough money to fill them with gas. The fact that Katrina hit at the end of the month made preparing for it nearly impossible for those living "paycheck to paycheck." It seems that little effort was made to help the poor get out of the city before the hurricane hit...why? Why were these people left to fend for themselves, left to suffer and to die?
It may seem inappropriate to raise issues of politics and race when looking at such a horrific natural disaster, but the situation in New Orleans demands we look at them. The response to Katrina is bringing many upleasant realities about our nation to light and we must face them.
Though it may be somewhat inflammatory, I want to share a post from Sploid that expresses some of the thoughts I've been ruminating over the last couple days:
Admit It: Katrina's Victims Are Black
Let's all continue to pray for the victims of Katrina and keep them in our thoughts. This disaster may very well prove to be a transfiguring event for our nation.
The miserable situation at the Convention Center over the last several days raises many questions that government officials at the local, state, and federal level will be obliged to eventually answer. Victims of Katrina were either brought or told to go to the Convention Center and were promised that aid would be forthcoming. Ironically, those in the Convention Center have esentially been left for dead; life inside its walls has become a horrific, miserable struggle to merely survive that most of us would not believe could exist in the United States today.
We should all question why the poorest, more destitute residents of New Orleans were the ones made to disproportionately suffer in Katrina's wake. While all residents were asked to evacuate, so many in New Orleans are too poor to afford a car, much less a plane ticket...even those who own cars may not have had enough money to fill them with gas. The fact that Katrina hit at the end of the month made preparing for it nearly impossible for those living "paycheck to paycheck." It seems that little effort was made to help the poor get out of the city before the hurricane hit...why? Why were these people left to fend for themselves, left to suffer and to die?
It may seem inappropriate to raise issues of politics and race when looking at such a horrific natural disaster, but the situation in New Orleans demands we look at them. The response to Katrina is bringing many upleasant realities about our nation to light and we must face them.
Though it may be somewhat inflammatory, I want to share a post from Sploid that expresses some of the thoughts I've been ruminating over the last couple days:
Admit It: Katrina's Victims Are Black
Let's all continue to pray for the victims of Katrina and keep them in our thoughts. This disaster may very well prove to be a transfiguring event for our nation.
posted by Mitch Glaser @ 11:50 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Mitch,
We must be careful not to make this disaster about race. It is about poverty. Remember too, your Bubbie is neither Black nor poor.
We can't let the media define this situation for us; the state and federal government which is charged with protecting its citizens has failed on every level. I feel sick.
Your mom is right in that there are people of all races suffering in New Orleans, but the great majority of people who aren't being helped are blacks.
At a benefit concert simulcast live by NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, and Pax earlier this evening, rapper Kanye West said "George Bush doesn't care about black people" and that the government is set up "to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible."
Emotions are running high right now and I am concerned about the ramifications for our nation going forward.
I'm so overwhelmed by all this, Mitch, I don't want to think about it anymore. I've seen image after image and read story after story of people dealing with things that I never imagined anyone in our country would ever have to deal with. The fact that it is even an issue to me that it is in "my" country, is disturbing me.
I just didn't think something like this would happen, I feel as though our whole way of life is somehow threatened, or maybe I had some illusions about our way of life that are threatened, I don't know. I'm finding it hard to sort through everything in my mind and think clearly about all the ramifications. Maybe one day I will be able to make more sense of it, but I sort of hope not, I should not be desensitized to horrors such as these.
I feel as though "all bets are off" or something, like anything could happen, if something like this could happen. I feel sick, as well.
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