shakran

they're taking whatever food they can get. If you've just gone 2 days without food or drink you're not gonna sit there and be a picky jackass over what you drink either.

Marvelous Marv

I'm just happy to know that no matter how bad a situation is, or how many people have died, some people will always have the time to scream "racism."

Unless, of course, something bad has been said about whites, especially white Christians.

Then it's not racist, of course.

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pattycakes

here here. I agree

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AVoiceOfReason

Yep, I'd even drink Pepsi after a couple of days.

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AVOR

A Voice Of Reason, not necessarily the ONLY one.

fresnelly

Head over to the CNN site where you can find the same first picture with a much different description.

In the <b>RELATED</B> box, click on the "Gallery:After Katrina" link and look under the Louisiana tab.

<b>"A young man drags groceries through chest-deep water in New Orleans on Tuesday."</b>

This interpretation here is much kinder and focuses on the man's struggle.

Never draw your conclusions from a single source.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/08/3....ap/index.html

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maskedrider

Words are very powerful. The word choice is very telling.

anti fishstick

well the news is very biased. it always has been. there's nothing new here.

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Esoteric

Agreed, if it is indeed from the same source, that's pretty wrong.

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smackson

I wouldn't consider it racism because it came from two totally different people that use their wording differently.
If the same person did write both these then I would say that it was fucked up.

lindalove

This is what Snopes has to say about it...

anleja

When the people in these two pictures are able to get back to civilized society, they are going to go online and see all this commotion over photos of themselves which they probably had no idea were even taken. Not every day you are part of a Snopes article.

spongy

My first thought upon seeing that AFP is Agence France-Presse was that perhaps it was a translation issue from Fench to English, but Snopes pretty much explained it as no racist, yet without that research many will see racism.

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mandy

im from south africa, a place where racial segregation was a really big thing in the past, and sometimes still is, although we getting to the point where it is no longer a such a big situation.

if these pics were given captions by the same person then i'd definately say that he/she has got some issues to deal with, i mean heeeeeeeeeelllllllloooooooooo!!!

however, if two different people gave captions to these photos, then i'd say that it would be a difference in opinion.

Charlatan

Everyone should check the Snopes link above... it has comments from the Photo agencies and the photographers themselves...

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mandy

well then. if photographer dave martin did actually see the guy looting "go into the shop and take stuff" then why didnt he take a pic of him doing that?

JustJess

I feel much better after reading the photographer's points of view. I love snopes!! Without the background, it was easy to think we were observing evidence of pervasive racism in the media... which I am not convinced doesn't exist, but at least this isn't some horribly obvious event.

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Charlatan

Maybe he did. It just didn't get picked up by Yahoo... or it didn't look as nice... If he is a photographer he probably snapped many shots of everything.

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Destrox

No, without thinking for your selves you were observing evidence of a individual who wanted to make somthing that was not racism, appear as racism. These two photos were placed together by somone to cause a problem, and even then it takes a matter of 10 seconds to do more then read the circled word and realize these are two different sources at work.

This is whats wrong with people today, they do not think for them selves and let the media do it for them so they then just mindlessly repeat whatever is spoon fed to them.

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j8ear

Update on these photos, as described by the photographers and the caption writers.

Brought to you by snopes

NOT RACISM.

-bear

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Eweser

I must have not read the caption correctly the first time I saw the picture of the boy. (I saw it on one of the news sites.) I thought it said "visiting" instead of looting....

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tspikes51

Not racist at all. Even if they were written by the same person, there is one major oversight. In the photo where the guy is "looting" stuff, he has two garbage bags full of stuff with him. Not so with the other picture.

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JustJess

I won't disagree that people tend to take things at face value, oftentimes to their detriment, but I would respectfully request to not be lumped into that group automatically.

I read and reviewed both pictures carefully; without further information, an undercurrent of racism seemed pretty apparent, same source or no. That's why the snopes article was so useful - they spoke to the actual participants and illuminated the gray area that the person spreading these two photos tried to maximize.

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Marvelous Marv

I've seen a lot of rescue workers of different ethnicities hauling blacks from rooftops of flooded houses.

I've seen Harry Connick Jr. working tirelessly to help.

I cannot post statistics, but I would be willing to bet that a great deal of the relief donations are from non-blacks.

It's just sad to see all of that ignored in favor of one photo/article that lends itself to race-baiting.

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zVp

I belive it's just based on the situation. Maybe the first picture is depicting on how the man actually did "loot" the store while the two people in the second picture found necessities. There's a whole bunch of racism topics these days.

texxasco

I don't think it's racist either.....bad choice of words, maybe, but not racist. In this PC world that we live in I don't believe a news reporter is going to intentionally make a racist remark and put it into print. I think it's just a bad choice of words, or coincidence. It's racist when there is malicious intent behind the comment or choice of words used. It's not racist when it was just a poor choice or words, or if coincidently someone reads into the meaning of the comment or choice of words more than what was intended.

I think the media has done a good job of showing what is, and has gone on in New Orleans after Katrina. If there are more black people shown looting, or borrowing, (or whatever name you want to use instead of "stealing"), then that's probably who is commiting the crimes. Why are there more blacks shown commiting crimes? Because BLACKS OUTNUMBER WHITES in New Orleans...It's that simple.

There is that 'ol race card being played again... How lame.

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texxasco

A Salon article on the photographs by Aaron Kinney suggests the captions were a result of a combination of contexual and stylistic differences:

Jack Stokes, AP's director of media relations, confirmed today that [photographer Dave] Martin says he witnessed the people in his images looting a grocery store. "He saw the person go into the shop and take the goods," Stokes said, "and that's why he wrote 'looting' in the caption."

Regarding the AFP/Getty "finding" photo by [photographer Chris] Graythen, Getty spokeswoman Bridget Russel said, "This is obviously a big tragedy down there, so we're being careful with how we credit these photos." Russel said that Graythen had discussed the image in question with his editor and that if Graythen didn't witness the two people in the image in the act of looting, then he couldn't say they were looting.

The photographer who took the Getty/AFP picture, Chris Graythen, also posted the reasons behind his caption:
I wrote the caption about the two people who 'found' the items. I believed in my opinion, that they did simply find them, and not 'looted' them in the definition of the word. The people were swimming in chest deep water, and there were other people in the water, both white and black. I looked for the best picture. there were a million items floating in the water — we were right near a grocery store that had 5+ feet of water in it. it had no doors. the water was moving, and the stuff was floating away. These people were not ducking into a store and busting down windows to get electronics. They picked up bread and cokes that were floating in the water. They would have floated away anyhow.


Click here to read what Snopes had to say on the matter. This was where I got the above info.... Clears it up for me. You? A person who thinks in black and white is going to find racism in just about anything, whether racism is actually present or not.... pretty sad how people are shifting the focus on the devastating human tragedy unfolding in front of us, to friggen racism... Once again. How lame.

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bad jane

my first reaction was like many others--2 different sources, you really can't compare. i'd say not racist. and reading the snopes article just confirms that. one saw the guy looting, so captioning is appropriate. the other saw the couple picking up goods they "found" floating out of a store, so captioning is appropriate.

but even without that knowledge, still not racist imo. you can call it whatever word you like and there are many who justify doing it--but looking at the pics and reading the captions i assumed both were looting. i just figured one source was calling it like it was and the other was the sympathetic sort trying to be a little softer. "looting" is negative, and there are plenty of people who feel it is appropriate given the situation, thus, it isn't really wrong. they are just taking things that would otherwise be destroyed anyway.

you can argue they were trying to use a softer phrase than looting because the couple in the pic is white--but had the captioning had been reversed no one would be shouting racism. based on comments lately seen in the news, i think there are some who want to make this a race issue. if you look hard enough, you can find "evidence" of anything.

smooth

You can compare the two.
And you ought to.

If you disagree, read some Gramsci...


I'll come back to this thread after I've seen some evidence that people have at least tried to come to terms with his concept of hegemony. Otherwise the comments I'd like to add won't make much sense.


EDIT: as an aside, that is one of the worst snopes articles I've read. The investigator could have provided the reader with links to the concepts I alluded to above: why we see things the way we do, why the second photographer understands looting in a context of smashing windows and stealing electronics, but not food items that are obviously drifting out of a store in front of him and the people taking the items, the journalist's ad hoc explanation for why it wasn't looting, and etc.

Instead, the investigator simply quoted a second hand article quoting the journalists and called it good. Didn't even bother to deconstruct their responses...Snopes, you've done a disservice to your readers on this example.

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Jinn

Hegemony might apply in this situation if we even knew the race or "class" of the writers, but we don't. We do, however, know what they said. Did you even read it? It's pretty clearcut that they didn't intentionally disrespect the "black man." I understand hegemony, but that doesn't mean we should apply it in a situation where it so obviously does not apply.

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Jinn

And -- not to fan the flames -- but there is an inherent "Fuck you all, I'm smarter than you.." in a comment like; go read "X" or what I say won't make sense. In essence you're telling us that we're too ignorant to even understand the magnitude of your Speech without having read novels of backstory. If your point is THAT embedded, its likely not a good point to make. Rather, you could explain what hegemony IS to those who don't know, and then make your point.

Its safer to assume someone is intelligent than it is to assume they are not -- no one will be insulted that you thought they were smarter than they are).

For those of you wondering:

The argument being that in this instance we (The White Male Group) are the dominant group and dictate the terms of life to our benefit. It *could* apply, if it wasn't just a choice by two independent writers to describe seperate events in the most descriptive words they could use. Read what THEY said about the quotes above before assuming its hegemonic.

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smooth

You claim to know the concept but fail to assert why hegemony does not apply here. In fact, you said it obviously does not apply.

What do you understand the concept to mean?
Why would we need to know the race or class of the writers in order to understand how social frames operate on them?
Why would you put class in quotes?

Hegemony doesn't allow for someone to "intentionally" do anything. That's the meat of the concept. Your statement indicates to me that you misunderstand Gramsci's concept. Please re-study it so we can take this further.

EDIT: there's nothing arrogant about what I said. Your second post supports what I was concerned about. Does your notion of hegemony stem from web research?

That quote you posted does little to understand what socio-legal scholars have taken decades to try and tease from Gramsci's writings. Your quote doesn't indicate, and you don't seem to understand from your replies, the process of hegemonic control. If I had taken a page to discuss the process of Gramsci's hegemony you likely would have accused me of being pedantic. What better source to understanding the concept than reading and deciphering from the author himself? In fact, I saw at least one post in here that chastised members for not critically thinking on their own. My offer was that you and others go study the concept and come back for some in-depth conversation about a very difficult process of social interaction. This is how all classroom seminars operate, as far as I know. Students don't walk into the class and argue about concepts they haven't tried to understand on their own terms. Wouldn't that be arguing from ignorance?


To further elucidate the point: hegemony is exerted by the fact that particular frames become dominant modes of thought. As it relates to this, the second journalist wasn't able to conceive of the white scavangers as looters as a function of racism. As a function of what is portrayed in the media about looting's nature, who does it, why it's done, and etc.

We see some more evidence of how racism permeates our conscious and prevents us from seeing alternative explanations in this thread. One person commented that the bag was filled with loot, despite the fact that it's floating, we have no evidence the young boy took anything other than the case of Pepsi. And then we had an interesting comment on the fact that someone stole some pepsi, which wasn't a necessity to the poster. Completely missing the point that the "looter" was a boy--not a rational adult calculating what he may or may not need for survival.

Another commentator made a post that the backpacks probably had personal items in them. Why would such a comment be held to be valid? It only sustains on our preconceived notions of what people, most usually like ourselves, keep in backpacks in their ordinary lives. This is no ordinary situation...but we make judgements based on what we understand. And what we understand is shaped by the dominant culture. Other considerations appear irrational...this is the beginning of the concept of hegemony.

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wolf

This was a horrible situation, made worse is the whole negative media attention that the "Finding" vs "Looting" situation brings. Personally I feel that the newscasters would better spend their time helping to deliver supplies like food and water rather than disussing poor wording. Do I think the French Press is racist? No, I think they chose poor words, but they are not racist. Going into a grocery store which is 10 feet under water to get food for your family to survive, whether you are black or white, is not looting, that is surviving. Going into a bestbuy carrying out tv's, dvd's, mp3 players, or anything else that isn't necessary for survival, whether you are black or white, is looting/stealing.

I did see some people going into clothing stores and taking massive amounts of clothes. This I think is where the real issue is coming from, is that survival, or stealing. Well, are clothes a necessary part of living, yes. So in my opinion, if someone is taking a few pairs of pants and some shirts and shoes which aren't soaked, well, that in my opinion isn't looting/stealing. That is gathering necessary items to survive. Like the stores are going to hold onto that merchandise anyways. Please, just let them take it.

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Jinn

I WROTE that thread, and my ability to critically think is my very reason for disagreeing with you. Oddly enough, I think its more convenient to label this hegemonic and support Gramsci's theory. I *have* read Gramsci and I certainly believe it is an effective theory for describing intellectual control over the masses without their knowledge.

I'll again agree. This thread is littered with people under the "unintentional control" that hegemony provides. The idea that the white people had "personal things" in the backpacks and the black person did not, certainly. However, it does not (in my mind) influence the journalists. They described having a conversation with their editor over using the word "looting" as opposed to finding, and what it would mean.

Sociological theories are based on large groups of people, because they often break down quickly in small sample groups. As soon as someone begins to critically analyse the factors influencing the descriptions they cannot see due to hegemony, it ceases being hegemonic. They seperated themselves from their preconcieved notions about the subordinate class and chose the words only becuase one had WITNESSED looting, whereas the other had not. In the case where looting had been witnessed, they chose the word 'looting.' In the case where looting had not been witnessed, they chose the word 'finding,' because it might have been slanderous and offensive.

(I must mention, btw.. that your post was very well put-together and I found myself nodding to it -- but I still maintain that for the very reason that the photographers carefully selected their words so as to NOT succumb to their cultural predispositions, they're avoiding their default (hegemonic) reponse.)

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Cynthetiq

since the context of the one picture has been examined, which I said in a different discussion since a photo is a single second in time with no context of before or after.

I don't know what to think about Wolf Blitzer's comment, but it's not half as bad nor as inflammatory as this OP is stating in my opinion.

LINK



Windows Media or Real Media

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Jinn

its hegemony

In all seriousness I can see that being taken in two ways.. that they're "so black" as a bad thing.. or... in the context of the full paragraph:

"are so poor and they are so black, and this is going to raise lots of questions for people who are watching this story unfold."

He could've meant that the media showing ONLY black poor people could be raising questions, or that because they're so poor and black, they're not being given as much treatment as they could be. In these examples, he's actually speaking in favor of black people, whereas in the first he's a racist. It's a thin line to walk, for sure.

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smooth

I need you to direct me to where Gramsci stated this.
The only way I could envision Gramsci stating that hegemony would cease to operate would be when a particular class obtains class consciousness. He certainly wouldn't speak about a single person breaching hegemony and nothing, nothing in his writings would speak to the fact that a single person could cease the operation of hegemony as a social construction. Quite the opposite, a persons rationalizations operate within and according to hegemony. You seem to bring it about as a conspiratol artifact, yet he understands it as even operating upon the dominant group along with the subjected. Such is its power, that both groups consensually "buy" into the concept...such is its ability to perpetuate itself...to hogtie all classes in a given society within a particular paradigm...


I find these comments interesting because I read the snopes article about the journalists backstories and only one journalist expressed that he had discussed the words with his editor:

Furthermore, notwithstanding our disagreement (or agreement, I don't know yet) on whether a person can step outside his or her hegemonic context after critically assessing a given situation, Graythen's responses do not support your contention that he critically analysed his own preconceived notions of what he was seeing. Here is his (what I labeled an ad hoc) rationalization of what he saw and chose to report on:

First, I contend that he did not make these kinds of assessments "on the ground." By their own statements, Graythen examined his concerns about whether looting was or was not occurring in response to his editor's concern--not while he was watching the event. Such is the basis for my assertion that the rest of his reasoning is an ad hoc response to explain to himself and others a basis for using "finding" rather than "looting" in his description of the events.

Second, when he looks back on the scene, he isn't as you attributed to him critically assessing the situation. His comments fall right in line with preconceived notions and cultural definitions of what constitutes "looting." Looting, according to this passage, occurs when people "bust down windows and get electronics." Looting occurs when things wouldn't be "floating away anyhow."

Now the issue can be semantically disputed: whether ownership really changes once something floats out of a store, or whether stealing hinges on whether the owners are coming back for their possessions, or whether you need to witness the item floating out of the door to realize it isn't yours (although this situation is especially poignant since the journalist admits he did see the items float out of the store and into the hands of the scavengers).

But what is most interesting to me, and how this most relates to hegemony according to my understanding, is that he explicitly links his concept of looting to common conceptions of what constitutes it (not even paradoxically how the law, much less a jury, would conceive of the taking of private property during the course of disaster and/or breakdown of social control [quite accuratly the definition of looting, as I have researched the term]); that he states what he would consider looting. That we can access the media database of who does those actions he alluded to--that impoverished minorities bust storefronts and take non-essential merchandise.

So we have a photojournalist saying across the desk to his editor, I guess you're right. This isn't looting. I've seen looting, I've seen it on TV, I've read about it in the papers, and this doesn't look like it. But those conversations didn't take place in the other newsroom. And presumably they didn't take place before the images of "looters" in wal-mart, taking food too we have to state, were splashed across our airwaves. The same kind of restraint shown with this piece wasn't shown in the pieces when black persons were photographed and discussed. No distinction has been made between the women taking food and the women taking clothes...or whether people taking TV's are the same people as the ones taking supplies that the Other is able to distinguish as necessary.

But what's really disturbing is how powerful hegemony is. Because we can see right here in this very example how racism as a hegemonic process can continue to operate even when all the actors want to not be racist. Yet it's ingrained in our social understandings. It's powerful and resilient...

...because guess what...even after all that discussion in the newsroom about being careful about describing the situation the end result is an image of a young black man described as having looted a place and a young white woman described as finding items.

So I contend that although not intentional, these media representations that replicate imagery of impoverished minorities as looters is not coincidental. Such a powerful theory...that even when we try to stop something we replicate it because it is part of our social reality and we can not, as individuals, walk away from the social constructions we are enmeshed within.

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sol1301982

Here's another photo from AFP, http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...hpvj5dd_photo3.

Does that make them racist now?

Destrox

Why would it? In a city that has a 80% black population you will simply get a huge base of photographs that are a majority of black citizens within.

Color doesnt change that fact that they had looted, yes stole goods, from that store to survive.

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texxasco

Well Said.... That's how I took it anyway. I saw the report and it sounded like he was speaking with sympathy for them, not contempt.

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texxasco

Nope.... Why would it? The city's population is approximately 80% black, so what are the odds that if you are looking to photograph looters in action that would find black people doing so? On the flip side of the coin, if you saw white folks coming out of a place of business, a business which is not open... just like the business in the photo below, and obviously carrying merchandise out of the store....would it be considered racist to publish THAT photo?



Looters hit a drug store in the French Quarter district of New Orleans in New Orleans, Louisiana, following Hurricane Katrina. Fresh floods, fires and looting rode in the destructive wake of Hurricane Katrina, deepening a humanitarian crisis that left hundreds feared dead and sections of New Orleans submerged to the rooftops.(AFP/James Nielsen)



Ok... Are we missing something? There's people in the photo, carrying out merchandise from a business that is not open for business. That's looting. The people in the photo are black. So what? What is racist about it? It sounds as though the caption below the photo is pretty accurate wouldn't you say? I'd say so myself.

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