highthief

No, not about the AP article however photos and video from New Orleans really makes this non-American realize how very different black society is in the US, perhaps especially the south.

Easily 98% of people seen in the news footage from the Superdome and in the streets are black. Not entirely surprising as blacks make up 70% of NO population and blacks occupy, on average, a lower economic strata and may have had less opportunity to leave - no money for hotels or bus fare or whatnot, they stuck around hoping the state will care for them.

However, when I see the images of reporters, national guardsmen, state and federal officials and so on - then the numbers are fully reversed and almost all are white.

Not really saying this is right or wrong or trying to explain it, it just hit me that when I hear people talking about the differences between white and black society in the US, I can now really visualize it.

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Si vis pacem parabellum.

Daniel_

True enough.

What astonishes me is that all the people have a perverse faith in the government to rescue them.

If this were happening in almost any other country in the world, 60,000+ people in one place with no authorities and no supplies would have started marching up the highway with banners saying "feed us or watch us die"

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Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air,
And deep beneath the rolling waves,
In labyrinths of Coral Caves,
The Echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand;
And everthing is Green and Submarine
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Ananas

W.E.B. DuBois' prediction for the 20th century continues to hold true and trouble us in the 21st.

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it's gritty

Hardknock

Welcome to the real America hightheif.

meembo

Most all reporters in the area are taking it to the politicians spinning the lack of support. I wish they could take that kind of critcism to political coverage as well. Seeing Bush on the defensive for a a change was refreshing.

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less I say, smarter I am

smooth

I don't agree with this. While the white commentators highthief is referring to may have had faith in the government, the black citizens didn't quite see it like that. Many of the ones I saw interviewed specifically attributed their refusal to leave on the basis that they didn't believe the government would or could provide the resources to them once they arrived at the shelters or secure their possessions once they left them behind.

I watched Greta on FOX last night trying to coax one elderly black man to come with her into the rescue boat. He chose to remain on his porch asserting he was "going to take his chances." Looking through his eyes, one would have seen a white reporter and then looking in the boat three white cops from places other than New Orleans and two of them were even described as being not from LA.

The look in his eyes seemed to be, yeah right. You're taking me to safety?
Not that they were going to drag him out of sight of the camera and lynch him, but that he was pretty skeptical of the idea they really had something along the lines of safety and his wellbeing to offer.
He certainly wasn't expressing any expectation or hope that "his" government was going to do him any favors. From his age and location, I suspect he was pretty used to the idea of self-sufficiency.

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"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman