Sri Lanka is a tiny place. Maybe that’s given us a Napoleonic Complex, maybe we’re tired of being compared to snot. Throw in the war, the tsunami, the suicide rates…we know we can’t play with the big boys. Ain’t no way we can show them up.
Until now:
President Chandrika Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka, in China on a state visit, sent messages of sympathy to Washington while her government contributed $25,000 through the American Red Cross.
So sure, it might not seem like much to our corporate-dough-raking readers. (coughmyannualsalarycough.) But that would be missing the point:
In a turnabout, the United States is now on the receiving end of help from around the world as some two dozen countries offer post-hurricane assistance. Venezuela, a target of frequent criticism by the Bush administration, offered humanitarian aid and fuel. [link]
But Condi, FEMA and the Prez seem to have differing views on accepting the aid:
With offers from the four corners of the globe pouring in, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has decided “no offer that can help alleviate the suffering of the people in the afflicted area will be refused,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Thursday.However, in Moscow, a Russian official said the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency had rejected a Russian offer to dispatch rescue teams and other aid.
Still, Bush told ABC-TV: “I’m not expecting much from foreign nations because we hadn’t asked for it. I do expect a lot of sympathy and perhaps some will send cash dollars. But this country’s going to rise up and take care of it.”“You know,” he said, “we would love help, but we’re going to take care of our own business as well, and there’s no doubt in my mind we’ll succeed. And there’s no doubt in my mind, as I sit here talking to you, that New Orleans is going to rise up again as a great city.”
As the news reports and first-person accounts roll in, it looks increasingly, incredibly clear that we have not been taking care of our own business well. Not well at all.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (who crossed party lines to support Bobby Jindal for Governor) exploded with frustration in a local radio interview last Thursday:
I told him [the President] we had an incredible crisis here and that his flying over in Air Force One does not do it justice.[link]
Mayor Nagin’s impassioned interview with Garland Robinette, (the WWL interviewer) continues:
You know the reason why the looters got out of control? Because we had most of our resources saving people, thousands of people that were stuck in attics, man, old ladies. When you pull off the doggone ventilator vent and you look down there and they’re standing in there in water up to their freaking necks.
And they don’t have a clue what’s going on down here. They flew down here one time two days after the doggone event was over with TV cameras, AP reporters, all kind of goddamn — excuse my French everybody in America, but I am pissed…
We’re getting reports and calls that are breaking my heart, from people saying, “I’ve been in my attic. I can’t take it anymore. The water is up to my neck. I don’t think I can hold out.” And that’s happening as we speak.
You know what really upsets me, Garland? We told everybody the importance of the 17th Street Canal issue. We said, “Please, please take care of this. We don’t care what you do. Figure it out.”
ROBINETTE: Who’d you say that to?
NAGIN: Everybody: the governor, Homeland Security, FEMA. You name it, we said it.
And they allowed that pumping station next to Pumping Station 6 to go under water. Our sewage and water board people — Marcia St. Martin (ph) — stayed there and endangered their lives.
And what happened when that pumping station went down, the water started flowing again in the city and it starting getting to levels that probably killed more people. In addition to that, we had water flowing through the pipes in the city. That’s a power station over there. So there’s no water flowing anywhere on the east bank of Orleans Parish. So our critical water supply was destroyed because of lack of action.[link]
A friend forwarded this email from a friend of hers, a medical student at Tulane:
It is no coincidence that the levee first broke at the industrial canal – this is the poorest neighborhood – a low area that has frequent minor flooding from your average bad thunderstorms. Over the years, levee repair has been most active in more affluent neighborhoods where the community complains that the wall isn’t high enough….Please understand that many New Orleans residents just couldn’t leave. It is/was a very poor city. Many people don’t have cars, there was no public bus involvement out of the city, and without available cash, what were people going to do once out of the city? Hotel rooms from Houston to Little Rock to Atlanta were booked. Most of those that stayed just didn’t have the means to leave, and our city has never developed a plan to assist people to leave. We didn’t even have established shelters. The superdome was always a plan B shelter, but there was no plan A. That is because the city wanted people to leave, and felt that just having shelters would be counterproductive. Last year, for hurricane Ivan, people took shelter in the superdome and had to contend with no food or water, heat, bad sanitation and chaos. Nothing like what we have now, but it served as a disincentive to come to the superdome this time…
6 years ago, the city evacuated for Hurricane Georges, and the interstate was a parking lot during the storm. Luckily, it diverted East at the last moment, but that experience also taught residents that staying might be safer than a late evacuation, since getting caught on the freeway could be deadly. In short, there are lots of reasons that people stayed in New Orleans, and it is naive to blame them for not heeding the mandatory evacuation order. By the way, that order was given 12 hours before the rain started, and we know from prior experience that New Orleans needs 48 hours to effectively evacuate.
Funny, then, that FEMA director Michael Brown decided to blame the victims:
I think the death toll may go into the thousands and, unfortunately, that’s going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings. [link]
Finger pointing is essentially counter-productive, yet there appears to be a clear case for systemic racism and neglect of the poor in a city that is 67% African-American. From what I’ve seen on the news, most residents’ attempts to survive by scavenging are not being distinguished apart from the outright looting of some punks. All reports and images are conflated into some sort of Black Anarchy, as witnessed by the controversy surrounding an AP newswire that captioned a Black person as “looting” while a young White couple were “finding.” Slate’s Jack Shafer gives it a try, but I haven’t seen much else.
Still, the world outside our borders has much to say about this tragedy:
World leaders and ordinary citizens have expressed sympathy with the people of the southern United States whose lives were devastated by the hurricane and the flooding that followed…The pictures of the catastrophe — which has killed hundreds and possibly thousands — have evoked memories of crises in the world’s poorest nations such as last year’s tsunami in Asia, which left more than 230,000 people dead or missing.
But some view the response to those disasters more favorably than the lawless aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. [ link]
My homeboy had this to say from the comfort of the Motherland:
I am absolutely disgusted. After the tsunami our people, even the ones who lost everything, wanted to help the others who were suffering,” said Sajeewa Chinthaka, 36, as he watched a cricket match in Colombo, Sri Lanka.“Not a single tourist caught in the tsunami was mugged. Now with all this happening in the U.S. we can easily see where the civilized part of the world’s population is.” [link]
So what gives? Economic disparity has a great deal to do with those who managed to leave New Orleans and those forced to remain. Why that disparity generally falls along color lines is question long debated, little understood. But the city’s lack of preparation does have a reason.
It appears that the money has been moved in the presidentÂ’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose thatÂ’s the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees canÂ’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.
— Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 8, 2004.
That was a year ago. So between diverted funds, denial of global warming, developers building on wetlands, delayed evacuation orders, no clear disaster-response program, contradictory directives from FEMA and Homeland Security, and the Governor Kathleen Blanco’s shoot-to-kill order ( Great idea, Kathy!) we are now watching a terrible natural disaster assume horrifyingly tragic proportions. All while President Bush refuses aid from abroad.
I don’t mean to discount the real looters and predators running amok right now. Free-wheeling New Orleans’ Mayor Ray Nagin offers a reason that might explain why people felt safer in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami and Bombay flood than they do in New Orleans:
“And one of the things people — nobody’s talked about this. Drugs flowed in and out of New Orleans and the surrounding metropolitan area so freely it was scary to me, and that’s why we were having the escalation in murders…You have drug addicts that are now walking around this city looking for a fix, and that’s that reason why they were breaking in hospitals and drug stores. They’re looking for something to take the edge off of their jones, if you will.And right now, they don’t have anything to take the edge off. And they’ve probably found guns. So what you’re seeing is drug- starving crazy addicts, drug addicts, that are wrecking havoc. And we don’t have the manpower to adequately deal with it. We can only target certain sections of the city and form a perimeter around them and hope to God that we’re not overrun.” [link]
A quick attempt to get drug stats unearthed a 2003 National Institute on Drug Abuse study:
The number of MDMA ED [Ecstasy] mentions decreased in 11 CEWG areas from the first and/or second half of 2001 to the first half of 2002, with a significant increase reported only in New Orleans.
The report cites weed and ecstasy as the main drugs in New Orleans..not what I’d consider a crack-epidemic, but reliable numbers are hard to come by. In any case, it doesn’t take a great many desperate users to create a general atmosphere of fear and lawlessness, so maybe the Mayor is on to something. These are just some thoughts, not a comprehensive analysis by any means.
Amardeep tackles the sociological implications surrounding Hurricane Katrina, as well as comparisons to third world countries in his blog.
Everything is conflated into some sort of Black Anarchy, as witnessed by the controversy surrounding an AP newswire that captioned a Black person as “looting” while a young White couple were “finding.”
i don’t follow the news that closely, but i thought that was a hoax?
not a hoax, but more complicated.
I thought FEMA is currently evaluating foreign assistance case by case.
Please guys, before we all become entrneched in our positions and bring out our hidden likes and dislikes , please read this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/weekinreview/04depa.html
and read Maitri’s blog (a regular sepia mutiny commentor). She knows what is talking about.
http://vatul.net/blog/
I have strong opinions about this disaster and the carelessness it was handled from my experience of N’Awlins but I am keep to myself for now.
i’m not interested in the political issues much, but i would link to see more comparisons between flooding-disasters in various countries (perhaps more elaboration from cicatrix about sri lanka, if she knows anything). or pointers to blogs or articles dealing what that issue. i asked rezwanul of 3rd world review his take (he’s in bangladesh) and responded with this.
To continue on this finger-pointing thing, and while we are speaking about Mayor Nagin still– has anyone noticed this story? http://junkyardblog.net/archives/week_2005_08_28.html#004752
Apparently those school buses could have been used to get 17,000 people out of New Orleans- the city buses totaled up to 360. There is a lot we could not have prepared for, but we had many opportunities to stem the tide of suffering that we see in New Orleans today.
Btw, in the link, notice the oil slick floating away from the busses.
Oh and another thing, that AP newswire you are talking about, the pictures were from two different sources. One was the Associated Press, the other was something like the Agence- France- Press. Here is the Snopes article on it- http://www.snopes.com/photos/katrina/looters.asp\ For future reference, any time anyone gets an email claiming something, please be sure to check it on Snopes. It has become the authority on debunking urban legends and the like.
Have a nice day.
Ooops, I see Razib already linked the Snopes story. Sorry buddy.
If you click on the link Razib provided (comment #2) you’d see that that snopes calls the status on this true.
The issue is complicated because the pics are from two different image providers, who use varying litmus tests when captioning.
Read BoingBoing if you want an argument over this, but my point is that the general media tendency has been to depict a hugely Black city as one that is full of rapists, predators and looters in the hurrican’s aftermath. Instead of analyzing why they were not evacuated, why they couldn’t leave the city on their own, why the levees were left unbuilt, why the president took so long to address the issue, why congress took so long to legislate help, why national guardsmen weren’t sent in sooner, why Homeland Security was turning away Red Cross workers because it couldn’t guarantee their safety, why why why.
Ok? Can we move on?
Razib, if you want to see more “comparisons between flooding-disasters in various countries” would you care to narrow that down a tiny bit?
Speed of response, all other factors being equal?
Death toll, preventable vs inevitable, all other things being equal?
Scale of devastation? Loss to businesses? Impact on GDP? Area of disaster by sq mile? All other catagory 5 storms? All other things being equal, of course.
I read Rezwanul’s blog entry with interest, but he qoutes an article at legnth that attributes Bangladeshis ability to survive disasters on the fact that “Bangladeshis place great importance to social and family ties.”
The danger in making such comparisons with the US is that easy tendency to say that African-Americans, due to their predominant visibility in Katrina’s aftermath, therefore do not place great importance on social and family ties. The truth of the matter is that, clearly in New Orleans, social ties and a sense of reponsibility were severed along racial lines, with those who lived on higher ground (affluent, white) not caring much what happened to those literally below them.
The rest of Rezwanul’s post quotes at legnth Bangladeshi blogger Mezba, who gives specifics on most of the issues I discussed here.
I like Rezwanul’s blog. He is an intelligent man. But the people he is quoting have probably never been to New Orleans. Sure, the city has serious dark side but “family value” arguement is totally bogus for New Orleans.
They forget that New Orleans is one of the few generational cities of America. Even African-Americans have been there for generations as a family – to some degree that is how they survive the abject poverty. They are people who have not left new orleans in 5-6 generations – quite common in South Louisiana and New Orleans in particular.
It is city that has hundreds of years of french, african, spanish, and english culture.
For good or bad, you cannot use generalities/ stereotypes for New Orleans. Personally, I would rather use this opportunity for lessons learned and healing.
pick any variable cic. a slice of an orange gives you a taste of the whole thing. i’m interested in property and violent crime (ie; those assaulted after making it through katrina) actually…but we will have wait months for a full accounting i suppose.
cicatrix, just because the pictures and the captions behind it exist, does not mean that the racism you implied exists. just clarifying my point. And anyone have any comment on the bussing issue?
Re: Bussing Issue.
Nobody will ever defend South Louisiana for their local murky politics. It is legendary but look at why this tragedy happened, and could it have been avoided to some degree. Huey P Long, Edwin Edwards…….the list goes on.
Here is an excerpt from NYT article. You can use their analysis either way [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/national/nationalspecial/04reconstruct.html?pagewanted=1]
Now the excerpt…………
“They wouldn’t have had any money to evacuate,” said Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell.
Experts disagreed on whether there were adequate evacuation plans for those most in need. Brian Wolshon, an L.S.U. civil engineering professor who consulted on the state evacuation plan, said the city relied almost entirely on a “Good Samaritan scenario,” in which residents would check on elderly and disabled neighbors and drive them out of the city if necessary.
Planning was stymied by a shortage of buses, he said. As many as 2,000 buses, far more than New Orleans possessed, would be needed to evacuate an estimated 100,000 elderly and disabled people.
But Chester Wilmot, an L.S.U. civil engineering professor who studies evacuation plans, said the city successfully improvised. He said witnesses described seeing city buses shuttle residents to the Superdome before Hurricane Katrina struck.
“What I’ve heard is that there were buses, but they weren’t very well utilized,” Professor Wilmot said. “They literally carried very few people.”
PERSONAL NOTE: I know about dozen people whom I would call them quite close friends from South Louisiana who are in some sense affected by Hurricane Katrina. I have not even attempted to make an “academic” discussion. They are in the middle of it. Either we help them or…………
well…an ex-girlfriend, who is from the northwest, worked for the red cross in baton rouge. a lot of the staff never went grocery shopping, they simply pilfered food stocks supposed to go to people who had been burned out of their house or what not. she implied it was the tip of the iceberg, and her roommate, who was from texas and had worked for a few years for the local cross offered that it was just “louisiana culture.” she decided to leave emergency management and go back to science after that experience, laboratory politics looked a lot less nasty….
So, before my first comment gets lost- what about those busses that were just standing there? Check my previous comment if you have no idea what I’m talking about.
woah, sorry guys- i am really messing up the comments format today.
So, before my first comment gets lost- what about those busses that were just standing there? Check my previous comment if you have no idea what I’m talking about.
my main issue with bringing stuff like this up is that if you are a democrat you can find 1,000 examples of republican perfidy, and vice versa, while if you are a local official you can find 1,000 examples of federal perfidy, and vice versa. these fiascos are illustrative of problems but not necessarily indicative of general issues or differences of magnitude between vector A (incompetence of group A) and vector B (incompetence of group B). the world is big enough that selection biasing can do wonders….
razib, I agree. That’s pretty much all I can say at this point. This is a massive human tragedy, and for some reason over here in the Pacific Northwest- it doesn’t seem like people understand the gravity of what’s happening. I am happy about the recovery efforts happening right now, but I’m just worried about the future. People are using this for political points and this whole thing might cause even more divisions in the end. 9/11 at least had some sort of enemy, how the heck are we supposed to do a “War against Water”? We don’t have any enemies in this one except for eachother. In concluding my rambling statement, I just have to say that we should probably focus on recovery now and finger-pointing later.
” a lot of the staff never went grocery shopping, they simply pilfered food stocks supposed to go to people”
I believe it 100%. Louisiana culture is epitome of nepotism, and corruption to the extreme – almost too much of family value. A state with incredible oil and gas reserves/ revenue struggles – why? All said, New Orleans is a generational city as opposed to most major cities in America that are immigration fueled. I think a casual, sophmoric analyst/ blogger will not know this.
When they themselves refer self as “banana republic”, they are not joking.
I am just opposing effort to strip them of their humanity and that too when their chips are down. New Orleans is the most open, laid back town in the world – “Laissez les bons temps rouler”
why are there 3 oregon brown bloggers commenting on this thread?
Razib- you’re an Oregon bloggeR?
yep. 40 miles from you 🙂
This is off topic, but given the high density of geeks who read this forum I’m going to comment on more than one Katrina-related post here to bring it to people’s attentions. (Apologies SMers). It seems that you can help fund efforts and possibly volunteer to help restore communications to the New Orleans/Biloxi area by helping out Part-15.org, an organization devoted to the unlicensed part of the radio spectrum. Here’s the Katrina Part-15 information.
Razib, what are you doing up at 6 in the morning buddy? My excuse is that I’m on the night shift at Intel. What’s yours? And Kush, for that matter.
“What’s yours? And Kush, for that matter.”
Reading goofy, New York Times.
i’m a code mole 🙂 anyway, beware of the timestamp. i wasn’t up at 6, i was up at 3. PDT rules!!!!
From New York Times. This is most articulate and touching piece I have read in last 1 week.
September 4, 2005 Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans? By ANNE RICE
La Jolla, Calif.
WHAT do people really know about New Orleans?
Do they take away with them an awareness that it has always been not only a great white metropolis but also a great black city, a city where African-Americans have come together again and again to form the strongest African-American culture in the land?
The first literary magazine ever published in Louisiana was the work of black men, French-speaking poets and writers who brought together their work in three issues of a little book called L’Album Littéraire. That was in the 1840’s, and by that time the city had a prosperous class of free black artisans, sculptors, businessmen, property owners, skilled laborers in all fields. Thousands of slaves lived on their own in the city, too, making a living at various jobs, and sending home a few dollars to their owners in the country at the end of the month.
This is not to diminish the horror of the slave market in the middle of the famous St. Louis Hotel, or the injustice of the slave labor on plantations from one end of the state to the other. It is merely to say that it was never all “have or have not” in this strange and beautiful city.
Later in the 19th century, as the Irish immigrants poured in by the thousands, filling the holds of ships that had emptied their cargoes of cotton in Liverpool, and as the German and Italian immigrants soon followed, a vital and complex culture emerged. Huge churches went up to serve the great faith of the city’s European-born Catholics; convents and schools and orphanages were built for the newly arrived and the struggling; the city expanded in all directions with new neighborhoods of large, graceful houses, or areas of more humble cottages, even the smallest of which, with their floor-length shutters and deep-pitched roofs, possessed an undeniable Caribbean charm.
Through this all, black culture never declined in Louisiana. In fact, New Orleans became home to blacks in a way, perhaps, that few other American cities have ever been. Dillard University and Xavier University became two of the most outstanding black colleges in America; and once the battles of desegregation had been won, black New Orleanians entered all levels of life, building a visible middle class that is absent in far too many Western and Northern American cities to this day.
The influence of blacks on the music of the city and the nation is too immense and too well known to be described. It was black musicians coming down to New Orleans for work who nicknamed the city “the Big Easy” because it was a place where they could always find a job. But it’s not fair to the nature of New Orleans to think of jazz and the blues as the poor man’s music, or the music of the oppressed.
Something else was going on in New Orleans. The living was good there. The clock ticked more slowly; people laughed more easily; people kissed; people loved; there was joy.
Which is why so many New Orleanians, black and white, never went north. They didn’t want to leave a place where they felt at home in neighborhoods that dated back centuries; they didn’t want to leave families whose rounds of weddings, births and funerals had become the fabric of their lives. They didn’t want to leave a city where tolerance had always been able to outweigh prejudice, where patience had always been able to outweigh rage. They didn’t want to leave a place that was theirs.
And so New Orleans prospered, slowly, unevenly, but surely – home to Protestants and Catholics, including the Irish parading through the old neighborhood on St. Patrick’s Day as they hand out cabbages and potatoes and onions to the eager crowds; including the Italians, with their lavish St. Joseph’s altars spread out with cakes and cookies in homes and restaurants and churches every March; including the uptown traditionalists who seek to preserve the peace and beauty of the Garden District; including the Germans with their clubs and traditions; including the black population playing an ever increasing role in the city’s civic affairs.
Now nature has done what the Civil War couldn’t do. Nature has done what the labor riots of the 1920’s couldn’t do. Nature had done what “modern life” with its relentless pursuit of efficiency couldn’t do. It has done what racism couldn’t do, and what segregation couldn’t do either. Nature has laid the city waste – with a scope that brings to mind the end of Pompeii. •
I share this history for a reason – and to answer questions that have arisen these last few days. Almost as soon as the cameras began panning over the rooftops, and the helicopters began chopping free those trapped in their attics, a chorus of voices rose. “Why didn’t they leave?” people asked both on and off camera. “Why did they stay there when they knew a storm was coming?” One reporter even asked me, “Why do people live in such a place?”
Then as conditions became unbearable, the looters took to the streets. Windows were smashed, jewelry snatched, stores broken open, water and food and televisions carried out by fierce and uninhibited crowds.
Now the voices grew even louder. How could these thieves loot and pillage in a time of such crisis? How could people shoot one another? Because the faces of those drowning and the faces of those looting were largely black faces, race came into the picture. What kind of people are these, the people of New Orleans, who stay in a city about to be flooded, and then turn on one another?
Well, here’s an answer. Thousands didn’t leave New Orleans because they couldn’t leave. They didn’t have the money. They didn’t have the vehicles. They didn’t have any place to go. They are the poor, black and white, who dwell in any city in great numbers; and they did what they felt they could do – they huddled together in the strongest houses they could find. There was no way to up and leave and check into the nearest Ramada Inn.
What’s more, thousands more who could have left stayed behind to help others. They went out in the helicopters and pulled the survivors off rooftops; they went through the flooded streets in their boats trying to gather those they could find. Meanwhile, city officials tried desperately to alleviate the worsening conditions in the Superdome, while makeshift shelters and hotels and hospitals struggled.
And where was everyone else during all this? Oh, help is coming, New Orleans was told. We are a rich country. Congress is acting. Someone will come to stop the looting and care for the refugees.
And it’s true: eventually, help did come. But how many times did Gov. Kathleen Blanco have to say that the situation was desperate? How many times did Mayor Ray Nagin have to call for aid? Why did America ask a city cherished by millions and excoriated by some, but ignored by no one, to fight for its own life for so long? That’s my question.
I know that New Orleans will win its fight in the end. I was born in the city and lived there for many years. It shaped who and what I am. Never have I experienced a place where people knew more about love, about family, about loyalty and about getting along than the people of New Orleans. It is perhaps their very gentleness that gives them their endurance.
They will rebuild as they have after storms of the past; and they will stay in New Orleans because it is where they have always lived, where their mothers and their fathers lived, where their churches were built by their ancestors, where their family graves carry names that go back 200 years. They will stay in New Orleans where they can enjoy a sweetness of family life that other communities lost long ago.
But to my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us “Sin City,” and turned your backs.
Well, we are a lot more than all that. And though we may seem the most exotic, the most atmospheric and, at times, the most downtrodden part of this land, we are still part of it. We are Americans. We are you.
Anne Rice is the author of the forthcoming novel “Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt.”
cicatrix, thank you for this thoughtful post.
this is so incredibly right on the money. and hand in hand with that, there is emerging a discourse that attempts to contrast the response to 9/11 to the response to katrina in somewhat troubling ways. witness, for example, david brooks in today’s ny times:
“while looters rampaged.” yet another example, cicatrix, of what you were describing. too bad, of course, that this assertion is completely lacking in any empirical support. as we now have no excuse for not realizing, lots of folks were “looting” simply to scrounge up food and water to survive. yet, the image of “marauding black looters” persists.
but there’s another subtext here — the insinuation that black leaders in urban american are simply not up to the task in the same way that our white knight rudy giuliani was. never mind that many in our communities think that post-9/11 the “rules of the social fabric” were pretty well trampled. (insert favorite post-9/11 examples here.)
and call me crazy, but I was taught that a pretty important “rule of the social fabric” is to do whatever you reasonably can to prevent “the vulnerable” from facing “times of crisis” in the first place — at least when the nature of the threat and what needs to be done about it have been known for years. it certainly would have been less costly in terms of both lives and dollars.
There is another factor at work here. Some in the Republican party have advocated sending Rudy down there to oversee the recovery. They realized that the LONG TERM ambitions of the Republican Party, the ones that Rove and DeLay have worked so hard to secure, are in mortal danger because of Katrina. They see Rudy as the white knight of the entire party.
By the way — I had no idea that being forced to resign under pressure from the position of “commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association” qualified one to be director of FEMA. But imagine the possibilities this opens up — could our next Secretary of Homeland Security be Dr. Kushal Konwar Sharma, Dr. Apurba Chakravorty, or Dr. Parag Jyoti Deka??
Jack Schafer, who’s about 4 more good articles away from becoming my personal messiah, had this today today about 24/7 ‘disaster’ news coverage:
Thanggod. Someone finally saying it!
He also had this write up titled The Rebellion of the Talking Heads on Friday, that I missed while writing the post. He namechecks broadcast journalists who tried to ask stonewalling politicians those why questions, almost breaching standard media practices to do so.
Slate.com has quite a few interesting articles actually. Including one surprisingly (given the writer) empathetic view on why people loot.
Slate.com. Who knew?
The NYTimes today also has some lacerating (for the Times) articles on the bungling that went on. A day late and a dollar short, but still…
I did. 🙂 After NPR there is no better source of provocative analysis. Their daily news summary is the first thing I read in the morning.
Razib, Thank you for posting this link.
The help of an immediate neighbor becomes more important than a distant “government”(of course I dont mean the govt does not have this responsibiity, but it always a bonus to one’s own reality) People in many parts of the world know this and hence cultivate it.These are valuable observations.
Sumita
Sumita, nothin’ against you love, but what on earth are you trying to say?
Chutney
Nothing of any great consequence or importance. I was reminded of some things when I read that post. They were happy memories when they could have been horrible ones.(I now realise)
The word “floods and unavailable food” figured in those memories.Also “unknown friends” and “unexpected help” came to mind.
Thank you for asking though.
Sumita
Of course, in this administration, if you’re incompetent you keep your job. If you’re really, stunningly incompetent, you get promoted or honored with the medal of freedom.
Oh sure. Not a problem. As long as you’re happy.
“The first literary magazine ever published in Louisiana was the work of black men, French-speaking poets and writers who brought..”
Bring out the bells and whistles. If Anne Rice or whoever is going to give a history lesson on New Orleans French Gulf Culture, she has made a huge gaffe right there. But I am not surprised. I recently heard that she knew very little about the mixed, creole culture, which seemed an unlikely ignorance for one born and raised in N.O. But looking at the terminology she uses, I can see that is true. You might read “Our people and our history: fifty creole portraits” by Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes. The people to whom she is referring would never, ever, have been described as “black.” They were intensely French identified and proud of their mulatto background. They were “mulatto”, i.e. various degrees of white/black mixture. If you see the pictures of most of them, they look white or near white, while some are more obviously of partial African ancestry. There were 3 distinct racial divisions, black, white, and Creole/mulatto. Creole at one time meant one born in Louisiana, but later became short-hand for mixed blood. Many of these mulattos were the offspring of stable, common law unions between white men and often free black/mixed, or slave women. The mulatto offspring inherited land and even slaves. You might as well include the fact, in this history lesson, that “blacks”, or more often mulattos, did own slaves and even supported the Confederacy. They lost status after the Civil War and were grouped with the negroes. By the 20th century, they would be defined as black, if they chose to remain where people knew them. So many just left and became white. It was not a privilege any longer, to be creole. In the mid-1800s, there was a nun called Henriette deLisle, a sort of 19th c. Mother Theresa, she was called the “servant of the slaves” While she looked completely white as far her photograph shows, current practice would dictate her being portrayed by Whoopie Goldberg should a movie ever be made about her.
About the racism charge: all those rescuers and volunteers facing looters and shooters are doing their darndest to fight that racism slur and maybe they won’t even let any blacks help them–the damn racists–because they want to do it all themselves, being sooo guilty that they don’t even mind their homes are gone too. I will say, as one who knew N.O., the thought of spending even 5 minutes, much less 5 days in the Dome with thousands of, well, those who spent 5 days there, would indeed have been a great incentive for whites to get their buts out of town by any means available, no matter how poor they were. The guilty whites here were the ones sitting on their asses at Crawford Ranch. Aside from them, whites around here say you can take your “guilt” accusations and blow them out your trombone.
creola, i assumed what you are saying (that those men were of mixed-race and would not have identified as black or “negroe”), but whether rice was ignorant or not, as you imply, the dominant culture of the united states operates by hypodescent, one dropism. to them, those men were black. you are black. so, sally hemmings, a woman with 3 white grandparents, with fair skin (according to reports i’ve read, there were never any portraits of her), is a “black” icon.
myself, i obviously have opinions, but the question i want to know, what do people think should be done as regards the root causes in terms of specific policies and plans? i lean toward norman podhoretz’s solution.
p.s. just to be clear, people can identify as whatever they want in my world, and i always defer to the self-appellations others. but i have followed mixed-race issues in places like the interracial voice for a while and the standard of hypodescent seems pretty strong and difficult to get past. consider malcolm gladwell (blink and the tipping point), his mother’s family in jamaica self-describes as “middle class brown” (ie; mixed-raced), while his father is a white canadian. the hair makes him look like carrot top’s darker brother, but identifies as black (when his hair was shorter he has talked about the fact that many people assume he’s not black and he overhears racist comments and what not).
i feel like this whole racism thing is just the stupidies endevor in the world.
its not even a point to discuss it because its just so pointless to discuss a situation thats basically ridiculous. its past the point where aynthing is going to make sense.
i heard someone on CNN who was blaming Ray Nagin for not being Rudy Guiliani. Of all the people you could blame, Ray Nagin? thats it right there, how are you going to make a decision if half or more of your atittude is deteremined by being actually a racist. racism does not make sense. so in your right mind, you think if Ray Nagin handled his business, everything would be all right? ok. right.
its like this whole situation to me points out how stupid these ideas of race are.
you know who are heroes are now? people who just say what’s obvious
i’m totally tired of all this. its probably the first time i’ve seen in real time what its like to observe the total idioicy of racism that basically was the deciding factor of the country for an entire week.
if it wasn’t racism, it was people trying to explain racism, deny racism, solve racism, blah blah blah. but the one thing i think is, the whole problem is ridiculous. it just makes me totally sick of it.
basically if people keep making stupid decisions based on things that make no sense, things are going to start going to start not working in our country.
and then people can be as racist as they want to be as our nation pretty much becomes a sucky-ass place to live
to me this is what it looks like when stupid decisions keep getting made. all the money is going away. our basic way of running our society, energy, is becoming prohibitivly expensive. our education system runs on the efforts of people who are not educated here. the red states are losing people by the day and those areas are the poorest parts of the country except urban areas.
and the thing is, i don’t even know if anyone wants to change a thing
and Creola your post is scary
Aside from them, whites around here say you can take your “guilt” accusations and blow them out your trombone.
Really? Where I’m from, we just tell people to blow it out their ass when we know they’re full of shit. But, well, I guess you effetes are different, so maybe you should get FEMA and all your friends to pass out trombones to all the whiny black people in New Orleans. You know, be gracious and give ’em something to do while they’re dying.
I believe it 100%. Louisiana culture is epitome of nepotism, and corruption to the extreme – almost too much of family value. A state with incredible oil and gas reserves/ revenue struggles – why?
That’s pretty much always the case, isn’t it, though? Oil and gas provide a lot of revenue, but it tends to not be spread around efficiently, and is often manna from heaven for corrupt leaders (see Nigeria, Venezuela, much of the Caspian Sea region, much of the Middle East, post-Soviet Russia, etc. – the exceptions can basically be said to be Norway, Britain, and the UAE).
A friend forwarded this to me. Very jingoistic.. but still. inches of rain in new orleans due to hurricane katrina… 18
Your entire comment fell apart with that last line. “Business as usual” in Mumbai is nothing to brag about.
Cicatrix, thank you for doing this post.
Q: How do you say “hurricane” in Hindi?
A: “Schadenfreude”
Oh… and I missed the part where Mumbai was hit by a 15-20 foot storm surge…
That Mumbai and New Orleans comparison is total nonsense………..Don’t worry about it.
That Mumbai and New Orleans comparison is total nonsense………..Don’t worry about it.
I was in mumbai when the floods happened – it definitely wasn’t a walk in the park – kids dying trapped in cars etc. Not to lessen the obvious human tragedy in New Orleans but Bombay did not have any of the rapings/lootings/murders as in the Big Easy.
I agree about the business as usual bit being unnecessary but Bombay was in a bad shape. In fact Kalina (an area in B’bay) was water logged weeks after the floods. I walked home from Khar to Juhu during the floods (abt 7-8 kms) in water upto my chest. People were coming out of their apartment buildings offering the people walking home buscuits, water and whatever else they could.
The same thing happened in India during the tsunami – no lootings/rapings/murders. What in New Orleans, then is the differentiating factor that led to such dastardly acts? I dont think its poverty – most of the worst affected Mumbaikars during the floods were the footpath dwelling kind – definitely not rich.
I’m afraid this isn’t true — there were some recorded rapes in the refugee camps in southern India(or was that in Sri Lanka ?).