Am I crazy or is this racist?
 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ind-v-Loot.jpg

Both of these photos have been verified.

I thought that maybe the first photo was definitively tied to the AP article contained therein, but I'm not so sure - both are independent AP photos that can probably be used anywhere, in any context. All I know is that from a composition standpoint, both these photos appear exactly the same to me - except for the skin color.

Thoughts? Am I being oversensitive? What is the definition of "finding," anyway?

Wow. I don't consider it looting if they are getting necessities for life. Bread, water, other food, diapers. I do consider it looting if they are taking clothes, jewelry, breaking into ATM's, etc. However, others see looting as stealing anything in the face of a catastrophy. This is 2 different news sources, 2 different opinions. If they were both from the same source, I would say yes, it was. But I can see where it can cause problems. The wording on the picture of the 2 white people is funny: "after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store". The way it is worded sounds like it was partly changed.

If any of my ramblings make sense, I'm impressed...

If you look hard enough, you can find it anything you want anywhere you want.

Yes, this is racist. (Quite a funny pic though too!)

If it were the same writer, I could see it as being racist. However, different people convey the same idea differently. I think the person who used "looting" was more accurate, and said the same thing in fewer words. "After finding bread and soda from a local grocery store after Hurricane..." is absolutely horrible writing. But two people describing the same thing with different words? Totally normal...

If they were written by the same person, I'd call it racist. Coming from two different sources, I would not. People see and describe things differently.

I WIN!!!! I win I win I win!!!

:lol:

As noted, the "finding" sentence is very badly written, from a grammar perspective. It almost makes me wonder if it was written by someone for whom English is not their native language. It reads like it went through Babelfish or something.

Haha.. sorry.. pet peeve. People love to correct my "grammer" too...

:lol: :confused: :confused: :lol:

I think it's probably racist in an institutional sense. There have been dozens of studies about media portrayal (particularly local news) of blacks and hispanics as criminals, disproportionate to the actual incidence, and it has pretty much sunk in in the public consciousness. (That is to say, media covers blacks and hispanics much more consistently in the context of criminal activity than would be warranted by the proportion of crimes committed by those groups, and when you ask people about their perceptions of race and crime, they're consistent with media coverage and not with statistical truth.) So I'm not surprised to see this, and even from two different people, I do think it's racist, but only to the extent that our society still has racist undertones.

Not just two different people, but it looks like two different companies to me (AP? AFP? Correct me if I'm wrong.) Both companies may have different policies on how to report such things. They may know everyone's calling it looting, but for their stories or captions to photos, they're calling it "finding."

Just my theory. :)

Oh come on, it's <B>two different writers from two different companies</B>. I personally think the second writer should have used the word loot since that is indeed what took place. I'd do the same in the situation, but it doesn't change the fact that it's looting.

-Lasereth

Whoops! Just a brain typo.

Looks racist to me. I heard a caller (from toronto) on a radio show this moring talking about how he wasn't going to send aid ($$) this time like he does for most all disasters because he was disgusted at the looting by the "kind of people in new orleans" (I think he meant black)

I don't consider it looting if you are getting basic needs for survival in the aftermath of total destruction...now tv's on the other hand.

Plus the milk and steaks will go bad without power keeping them cool in WinnDixie. The whole neighborhood should have a bbq. - if they can find dry wood

I didn't notice that they weren't both from AP. That's my mistake.

However, let's say that they were both from the same company but from different writers - I'd still find it to be racist. All submissions are approved before sent out through the AP wire, and in that case the company would be the unified "voice" sending out mixed messages. However, again, my bad for not noticing that one was AP and one was AFP.

I agree. There is a big difference between a TV and neccessities of life in this situation. What would you do? Swim down and put some money in the cash register?

The photos themselves *are* from different sources so the context in which they are seen is a bit skewed. I would expect the editor of a paper that wanted to use these photos in his/her publication would alter the captions appropriately.


As for the caller from Toronto... yes, we have idiots here too.

1) Human suffering is human suffering. If you are inclined to assist those in need, looting shouldn't have any bearing on your decision.
2) What makes anyone think that looting didn't occur after the Tsunami in Asia? If a looting happens and a news camera isn't there to report it does that mean it didn't happen?

^^Beat me to it, Charlatan. Totally agree. Switch the wording on the photographs and see if you get a diferent visceral reaction. Doesn't matter if it's different news agencies, it still comes out that if it's a black person gathering some food in these circumstances, then it's automatically looting.

Steal and loot have negative connotations best not used to describe people getting things they need to live in the midst of a disaster that assuradely would've lasted longer than the food would have, so the white folk 'found' food in the grocery store as though it just happened to be there. The phrasing though for the picture of hte black fellow is pretty to the point on asserting he has stolen goods, ya' know, cause he's black.

I wonder if it has anything to do with being unable to prove it was looting? Did the writer take the photograph, or did the photographer watch the scene and tell the writer the story behind the photo? Or was the writer just handed a photo and told to write about it?

If the guy in the first picture actually owned those items (who's to say he didn't?) then stating in a newspaper that he was looting might cause a hell of a lot of embarassment. It's accusing him of a crime that for all I know he may not have commited. The writers/editors of the second article might not have wanted to accuse people of looting if they didn't know the facts. All of this is regardless of skin color.

racist.

They should take the food that will go bad.

Rather, the store should give it away.

Not racist.

The one person looted, the other person probably found it lying in the middle of the street and took it. Look hard enough for something, and you can find it anywhere.

Of course it wasn't racist, everyone knows that blacks loot while the nice white kids only "find" things [/sarcasm].

Honesty, stuff like this doesn't even suprise me anymore. America is a country built upon racism, why would a national disaster change that? At this point, if your skin is dark the best you can do is try to find somewhere to live where you're still considered "exotic" and not instantly "criminal".

Hmmmm....The link to the second picture is down.

The caption does seem odd though:
"after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store"

you find things in a place not from a place. On the other hand:

"after stealing bread and soda from a local grocery store"

fits much better. I would suspect that the caption on the second photo was altered from what it originally was, probably for legal reasons, but was then was not proof read correctly.

When I first saw the image, I was under the impression that the two photos were sitting right beside each other on some web page. That would have been very racist. The fact that it is two different writers from two different companies tells me otherwise.

Sorry I think this is 2 different writes with 2 different view points. If you did not store the essentials, and you broke into a grocery store for survival, you are still looting it in my book. It is not the owner of the stores fault you failed to properly prepare...

I would love more information to be honest. The phrasing 'finding bread and soda' almost implies it was not found within the store, but rather outside of it. In which case then it would not be looting but rather finding something that drifted out of a flooded store, which I would not consider the same, as breaking into a store for those items.

Yes, it is racist.

Isn't it funny how the small use of words can be so powerful, racism is often built on words, it's recognizing this that will change things, so kudos to you for being open enough to see what that writer was doing, whether or not he/she knows it, they wrote that from a racist perspective.

Sweetpea

Looks to me like someone trying to incite a race war.

"Finding bread and soda FROM a store". We've all seen doctored text before ... it's possible that someone PSed the word "looting" with the word "finding" and then started circulating the photo.

Also you say they've been verified but the link to the second photo is dead as far as I can tell.

In my opinion, those who find this as racist are the same people who let the media run their lives like a blind little mouse.

Its two different writers, two different publishers!

Guess what, white black orange purple or whatever color you are, thats considered stealing/looting/theft......

The top article is correct, the lower one is wrong.

Maybe, but you would do the exact same thing, if you were in the same situation. We all would.

I never said I wouldnt, and if it means life or death, yeah we all would.

But to call this racist because the one article wrote it wrong and the other did not is just ludicrous.

How the hell can anyone say it's racist? It's two different people from two different news companies, who have likely never met or even heard of each other.

The article is also not specific... he could have looted non-food, non-necessity items from the grovery store, where the other people were actually getting food.

I don't see how anyone can see racism.

To reiterate everyone elses sentiments, yes, two papers, two writers, not racist. On the other hand, take another good look at the pictures...

Outside color, the main differance seems to be quantity... The first picture shows someone with a GARBAGE BAG FULL in tow, and what looks to be a 12 pack of pepsi under the arm. The second shows two people with what are probably their possesions in the backpacks (maybe im going way out on a limb to assume that much, but deductive logic for me brings me to that conclusion) and with a couple of basic foodstuffs in one hand.

Maybe I'm wrong, but show me the same two pictures minus race, and the same conclusions of looting vs finding could very well be drawn.

Bottom line, my opinion, if it isnt yours, it's looting.

Well, there are two questions. As to the second, I don't think it's racist so much as poorly worded. Did they find stuff from a local store, or IN a local store? If the latter then it's stealing, so call it that.

As to the first question, I am not competent to diagnose mental illness, however, you ARE a member of TFP.... which kind of biases the answer towards "Yes!"

Not to get off topic, but is it correct to assume that looting is stealing? Is bread and soda found and not stolen still loot? Perhaps equating looting with stealing makes one question if the pictures are racist or not.

But you have to understand how the AP works. If I'm a newspaper writer in Yahoo Wisconsin and I write a story and my paper is a member of the AP, my story goes out on the wire. Same for the guy in Los Angeles. It's not like the AP is one unified voice. It's just a central gathering system for articles written by reporters all over the country - who work for different newspapers. Even if they were from the same organization, you couldn't blame the organization because the organization didn't write it, they're just passing it on.

White people don't loot. They barrow. Didn't you all know that?



*kicks himself*

Thanks for the education. I didn't know the workings of the AP. I've made errors all over this thread. :rolleyes:

Good idea. Can haul more loot that way.

http://www.southengineers.com/image/wheel01.jpg

:)

Unless they were getting the food from a house or something...they both looted. The thing that makes me thing that it could be racist is all the pics I've seen posted online of looters have been black people (I haven't seen any newspapers). I somehow doubt that that is the whole story.

However, I know I would loot in this situation too. Either steal or starve..it's not like the grocery store is open for business.

First of all, it's not racist, like many of us have said, simply because it is from two seperate articles by different writers from two seperate companies.

Second of all, I don't care whether it's life or death....both pictures were of people "looting" items from a grocery store. The fact that they needed to do it or that the food would have gone bad doesn't mean that they weren't stealing. It simply means that they shouldn't be persecuted for it, or blamed for their actions. But whatever situation they're in, taking things off shelves in a grocery store is definately not what I'd call "finding".

People need to stop being so sensitive to these topics. Yes, there are many instances when racial issues are brought up subtly or not-so-subtly in the media but believe it or not, all white people and the media are not looking for ways to hint at the racial superiority or differences in every issue they speak about. If you look for anything hard enough, you can find proof of it where it does or does not exist. I really don't think this means anything.

why are they stealing pop? are they that addicted to caffeine that they will wade through tons of water to get the damn soda fix?
although, if my city was every flooded i raid the beer and liquor stores and have partys on the roof tops.
on topic- no it isnt racist for the reasons already stated.

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.

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.

here here. I agree

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

Meanwhile...
 

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

Brought to you by snopes

NOT RACISM.

-bear

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....

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...hetiq/wolf.jpg

Windows Media or Real Media

its hegemony :D :D

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.

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.

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

Does that make them racist now?

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.

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.

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?

http://members.cox.net/texxasco/images/looters.jpg

http://members.cox.net/texxasco/images/afp.gif 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.

really? it looks like they are just out on a weekend shopping day...

i don't see a sign that says closed, I don't see bars pried open, I don't see gates pulled down.

in fact, if you look really closely... the YELLOW SIGN on the doors says NOW OPEN.

Considering the fact the there is no power in the French Quarter, I'd say they were looting. One other thing to consider.... What motive would the reporter have for shooting a photo of customers coming out of a store carrying merchandise they bought, and then call it looting? Come on now.... Are you for real?

Yes I am for real.

Let's recall for a moment a young black reporter Jayson Blair who wrote articles for the NYTimes about things that happend a few thousand miles from where he was writing them in his apartment and did it for months and months.

I don't see ANYTHING in that picture that denotes it being in NOLA, French Quarters, being CLOSED or being LOOTED. In fact the roadway and sidewalk look quite dry and they people don't seem to have wet clothing.

Critical thinking doesn't stop it stays critical.

This man nailed it...anyone who calls this racist is ignoring the obvious and LOOKING for something to call racist.

what kind of fool would cite an international news reporting agency's photo, and compare it directly to a photo taken by a different person with different editors and different caption writers?

classic case of someone trying to be slick and compare apples to oranges and cause an uproar.

The wording on the one with the white people was terrible, and sounds like it was written by someone who doesnt speak english as their primary language.

now that Photo is interesting...one would really want to be able to read what else is on that "now open" sign before making a call on that.

All the info you need is in the caption. That's the reason for having a caption anyway...If they put all the info you are requesting, in the actual photo itself, then it would obviously take away from the photo.

BTW Like I said before, you can read into a subject or photo too much, and there is such a thing as being overly critical.

you are free to believe all that you read, see, and hear.

I on the other hand will take it with a grain of salt since there's been plenty of charlatans (no relation to the TFP member) who have tried to pull the wool over many of our eyes, reporter Jayson Blair was one of them from such a trusted newsource like the grey lady, the New York Times.

If that picture was a capture from a video feed, and they showed the rest of the scene, again, maybe I'd be a bit more believing. You show me a picture of gates torn down, broken doors and glass, then I'd be much more believing, but that picture with the NOW OPEN sign... I'm going to say that I don't trust it 100%.

I can't say I disagree with you...and you're probably right to take it with a grain of salt... Actually a stand-offish position would be the best I think. I guess you could say it's hard to draw a conclusion onw way or the other in regards to it being racist or not without knowing.....the rest of the story...

sorry if this has already been said, but some of the grocery stores took a "take what you want, just don't break anything" line with regard to the hurricane. much of their food would be wasted otherwise.

I heard this too, but was it limited to food & clothing items, or was it anything the folks wanted? Do you have any sources for this?