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Banned
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Originally Posted by Seaver
Isn't this how almost all of his posts go?
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Thank you, Seaver. IMO, your post speaks volumes, and you obviously did read my comments at the bottom of post #1 on this thread.......
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Originally Posted by Lebell
BOR stated things too elequently for me to recap.
I actually find the title of the thread to be racist, as if being white means that you are inherently racist.
Many many white people went out on a limb to help people of all races down in NO while more than a few of color did not.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/US/Hurrica...1123495&page=1
Then there are those on the left side who are also trying their damndest to make this a race issue:
http://www.wcnc.com/news/topstories/....4fb21767.html
To reiterate, what happened was shitty and there is plenty of blame to go around, but to make this an example of class/race warfare completely bites. |
Lebell, the sources that I've quoted here include reports that were originally broadcast on Foxnews, and printed in the Washington Times, from a UPI news source. I've accused local Louisiana politicians and both major political parties of corporatism as a priority and of placing self ambition before the welfare and safety of constituents.
I placed the word "poor" before "dark" in the thread title. Is your decision to cite statements by Farrakhan as the second of only two sources used to bolster your arguments, any more "even handed" than what I have contributed to the thread, via title and content, in view of the details of the news reports about the Gretna bridge blockade?
The damage is in the perceptions now, Lebell. You seem to be choosing the side of the argument espoused by Richard Mellon Scaife financed, L Brett Bozell III, http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...2&postcount=45
and I'm lined up with those who perceive the superdome / Gretna bridge reports, and possibly other segments of this disaster, as extremely aggravated by the politics of poverty and race. It seems clear that if you could afford to own or rent a vehicle, you were allowed to pass over the bridge to Gretna, and away from the conditions experienced by those at the superdome. If not, you were forced back into N.O. by police firing warning shots in a blockade of pedestrian traffice, complete with menancing dogs.
The comparison to the use of dogs and firehoses on racial protestors in Selma in '65 may be lost on you, but it's an easy one to make.
This thread/forum is intended to draw out sentiment and opinion that further indicates, to each other.....where all of us stand.....an incomplete but growing picture of who we are....I think that it is doing that.
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http://archives.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0509/13/asb.01.html
CNN NEWSNIGHT AARON BROWN
President Bush Accepts Responsibility For Katrina Failures; Controversy Over Gathering of the Dead in New Orleans; Did Racism Effect the Governments Response to Hurricane Katrina?
Aired September 13, 2005 - 22:00 ET
(Scroll to bottom 30 percent of the transcript, to begin the following....)
......BROWN: Of all the complicated questions the response to Katrina raises, questions of race and class in the country rank right at the top. We have on the program, on three different occasions, talked about issues of race and Katrina, and the other day we recalled a race baiter by a conservative media website. Needless to say we don't agree, which made our conversation with the piece's author Brent Bozell that much more interesting tonight.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Brett, just dealing with the column you wrote on the 7th, the other day, to me a fair reading of the column is that you don't want us to talk about race at all, probably class at all, but surely not race at all, ad it may or may not relate to people's perceptions of the relief effort.
BRENT BOZELL, PRES., MEDIA RESEARCH CTR.: Well, I think the problem is that the perceptions, which are wholly false, are being created, on the one hand, by demagogues, and on the other hand, by some in the media who are giving the demagogues a hearing on this.
The fact of the matter is that two-thirds of New Orleans is black. Katrina didn't aim for that. Nor was the federal relief response as inadequate as it was inadequate because they were blacks. You know, in 1992, Hurricane Andrew decimated the East Coast. The response from the federal government was terrible. It was mostly whites. Was that racism?
BROWN: You've decided, which is absolutely your right, that there is no -- there is no truth to anyone's belief that race is somehow involved in how people were treated in the week after the hurricane. Fair enough. I don't disagree with that. But perception is powerful and perception is important, and what we know from polls is that black Americans do look at this differently than white Americans, as they look at a lot of things differently from white America.
BOZELL: And Aaron, perception is dangerous if it's not rooted in reality, which is my point. If anyone had come forward in the last 15 days with any tangible proof to back up the suggestion that there may have been racism at place, I'd like to hear it, and then report it. But there's no evidence. It's just this accusation that's being thrown out.
What I see is whites and blacks helping each other in New Orleans. I don't see any racism.
BROWN: I don't support the notion that race as such is the issue here, though I'm less sure honestly about class. I wonder the degree to which class played a role in how the government responded -- governments, plural, responded. I don't know. But I am interested in what people think, and I think it's my job to ask.
BOZELL: Well, but you know, it is appropriate to ask, Aaron. I don't question that. But when someone is making a very dangerous accusation -- and by dangerous I mean an accusation that splits the seam of the cultural fabric in this country...
BROWN: If it's appropriate to ask these questions, which is how you began that answer, why do you call me, little old innocent me, you know, why do you call me a "race baiter" for asking the question...
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Do you think black America is sitting there thinking, if these were middle class, white people, there'd be cruiseships in New Orleans...
REP. SHEILA JACKSON LEE (D), OHIO: No, wait, wait...
BROWN: ... not the Superdome?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOZELL: You may say, well, I'm just a questioner, I'm just a reporter, I'm just asking questions. But in fact, when people hear you, they believe that what's coming from you is not a question, but a statement of fact. Now, you may say that's unfair because I don't mean it that way, but that's the reality.
BROWN: So, journalists ought not ask these because their questions are perceived as statements?
BOZELL: I think journalists ought to be careful that they not create perceptions that are based on falsehoods.
BROWN: How do you know it's based on a falsehood unless you ask questions?
BOZELL: Well, I think that somebody making the acquisition ought to have some evidence before making the accusation.
BROWN: No one makes -- Brent, there's no accusation there.
BOZELL: Oh, sure there is. Sure, there is.
BROWN: No.
BOZELL: There are public policy leaders in New Orleans right now, and they've been there for a week, who have been making this accusation. I'm not saying the press is. I'm saying they are. But if the press' role, I think, ought to be to go to those people and say, put up or shut up.
BROWN: I think it is the role of the reporter to ask the question, even when the question is uncomfortable, and here I think that's all we did.
BOZELL: Well, Aaron, but when I see a reporter say those infamous words, "some people say," and then you go on to continue with the sentence, I'm always wondering who those some people are. You know, if somebody's saying something, put that person's name on the record.
BROWN: I actually think it's possible this would be a moment for us...
BOZELL: Holy moley, here it comes.
BROWN: There really is an opportunity to discuss a complicated and important American question about race and class and poverty, and how they fit together. And Katrina gives us that opportunity.
BOZELL: There's something else, Aaron, yeah, but there's something even better than that. There is the opportunity to celebrate the colorblindness that we saw after 9/11, the colorblindedness that we saw after Hurricane Katrina in so many quarters. That ought to be celebrated.
BROWN: I'll give you the last word on that.
BOZELL: Thank you, sir.
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Quote:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050919/foner
comment | posted September 6, 2005 (web only)
The Power of Outrage
Eric Foner
........The only bright spot in this man-made disaster has been the wave of public outrage at the Bush Administration's abject failure to provide aid to the most vulnerable. Indeed, it is hard to think of a time, other than at the height of the civil rights movement, when the plight of poor black Southerners so deeply stirred the conscience of the nation. Perhaps Hurricane Katrina will go down in history alongside Bull Connor's fire hoses in Birmingham and the Alabama State Troopers' nightsticks at Selma as a catalyst for a new national self-awareness regarding the unfinished struggle for racial justice..............
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Are you familiar with this under reported news story, Lebell? Your memory may be shorter and less complete than the memories of those who disagree with you. Your wholesale dismissal of the consideration of poverty and race with regard to what has happened in N.O. cannot occur in a vacuum. History is not unlike a conveyor belt of linked incidents unfolding in sequence, and 84 years is not too long a period to completely forget other disaster response...
Quote:
http://www.ideajournal.com/articles.php?id=2
Conspiracies of Silence
The Political, Economic and Sociological Correlates of the Tulsa
Drama Triangle and Massacre of 1921
by James R. Allen, M.D.
On the morning of May 30, 1921, Sara Page, a white elevator operator in Tulsa, Oklahoma, screamed, and a black man, Dick Rowland, ran out of the downtown store where she worked. He was soon arrested and taken to the Tulsa County Jail. The next day, the editors of the local white newspaper, The Tribune, published an editorial and front-page article about the event entitled, "To Lynch Negro Tonight."
To protect Rowland, a group of black men marched to the courthouse. Outgunned when a white mob showed up, they retreated into Greenwood, a black area outside the white city. The Tulsa police then deputized a number of men from the lynch mob, reportedly including members of the Ku Klux Klan. These men went out, killed, and set fire to the very homes and businesses they had been deputized to defend.
By June 1 when the Oklahoma National Guard arrived, about 1200 buildings, including 23 churches, had been burned, bombed, or looted, and as many as 300 people had been shot, burned alive, or dragged behind cars.(2) And so, a great drama triangle of persecutors, rescuers, and victims was played out in Tulsa. Some of those who posed as rescuers, however, were really wolves in sheep's clothing.
Karpman (4) made a significant contribution to understanding human problems, when he described the reciprocal roles of victims, persecutors, and rescuers. Switches in these roles and their related existential positions make for great drama, high emotion, surges of stress hormones-and much unhappiness. However, with the notable exceptions of Jacobs'(5) work on the Holocaust and the abuses of power, the correlates of the resulting drama triangle have not been well elucidated. It is our hope that this history of a few days at the end of May 1921, will add to this literature.
Built on oil fortunes and the Atlantic-Pacific Railroad, Tulsa had grown rapidly between 1910 and 1920. The Greenwood area grew up because blacks were forbidden by law to live or own businesses in the white city and were expected to be out of town by sunset. However, by 1921,the Greenwood area had grown to include 191 businesses and about 15,000 people, including lawyers, doctors and dentists, a movie theatre, hotel and newspaper.
Perhaps 10,000 whites crossed the railway tracks that separated Greenwood from the white city. Most of the 35 square blocks of Greenwood were destroyed, including the wealthy business district known nationally as "the Black Wall Street," and about 6,000 men, women, and children were marched at gunpoint to internment. (3) Survivors reported white families standing with their children around the borders of the area, watching the killing and burning in much the same way they would have watched a lynching. Then, all records of the event disappeared, and most civil discussion of it stopped. (6) It was as if the "riot," as it was termed, had never occurred.
Behind the Drama Triangle
Tulsa was not unique among American cities in terms of racial wars during the 1920's, but what were the causes? As in many other places (11) - Omaha, Nebraska; Kansas City, Kansas; Knoxville, Tennessee - rumors that a black man had harmed a white woman were the catalyst. However, it would seem highly unlikely that a black man would assault a white woman in a busy public building at the height of rush hour. Indeed, Miss Page refused to press charges. Behind this precipitant, however, lay a variety of less obvious psychological, political and economic factors.
In the name of decency and public morality, the Tulsa Tribune had long blamed blacks for all manner of vice, labeling "niggertown" as a "cesspool of inequity and corruption."(8) In reality, all of Tulsa at the time had a boom town atmosphere, much criminal activity, selective law enforcement and an active vigilante tradition. This was a period, it should be recalled, when the Ku Klux Klan was gaining strength. They became strong after the collapse of the Oklahoma Socialist Party, previously the strongest political group in the area.(7) Even before 1921, when Oklahoma was to be a Black-Indian state, the Kansas KKK had threatened to kill a black man who had been proposed as governor.
In the 1920's, Oklahoma had twenty-eight black townships and over forty black municipalities and was known as a capitol of black economic independence, a "promised land," and Greenwood was the most affluent all-black community in the United States.(2) However, on the other side of the tracks, in the white city, many young men had recently returned from World War I penniless.
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Last edited by host; 09-14-2005 at 10:41 AM..
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