Because they can
When it all comes down to dust, I will help you if I must;
I will kill you if I can. - Leonard Cohen
Maybe you think the worst is over, now Bush has had his photo op as the clockwork convoy of aid finally rolled into New Orleans. I thought, maybe so. Maybe that's enough death for them.
If you're like I was, you haven't seen this yet:
It's Geraldo Rivera, Friday night at the New Orleans Convention Center, where 30,000 Americans are locked down again with their piss and their shit and their dead. Rivera gets it, but he doesn't know what he's got. "What the hell, man - let them walk out of here!" If anyone tries it, if anyone reaches the perimeter, they're turned back.
From the website of the American Red Cross, their disaster FAQ:
Why is the Red Cross not in New Orleans?
Acess to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.
The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request--that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.
In the end, there is no understanding evil. There is only opposing it.
People shake their heads, "Why would they do this?" Because they can't fathom a reason they deny it's happening, and disbelieve the witness of the tightness in their chests.
When Polish Jews first entered the Warsaw Ghetto, they knew they'd been through Hell, but they thought they'd come out the other side.
This is happening, America, to your brothers and sisters. Don't think it isn't because you can't understand it.
Coming this week, count on it: the "pacification" of New Orleans.
posted by Jeff at 8:29 AM
49 Comments:
Never had much love for Rivera, especially after hearing some of the stupid "leaking" he was doing with battle plans on live TV while he was in Iraq. But if his actions where genuine (and he would be a monster if he could fake anything in the situation he's was in) I can at least respect the man as a human being again.
These are times of terrible change, the longer this crap goes on the more extreme its gonna get.
Superdome Evacuations Temporarily Halted
http://www.breitbart.com/news/na.../ D8CCQNBO0.html
Why the fuck is this happening???
This is criminal!
Here's the link:
http://www.breitbart.com/news/na/D8CCQNBO0.html
Capt. John Pollard of the Texas Air Force National Guard said 20,000 people were in the dome when evacuation efforts began. That number swelled as people poured into the Superdome because they believed it was the best place to get a ride out of town.
He estimated Saturday morning that between 2,000 and 5,000 people were left at the Superdome. But it remained a mystery why the buses stopped coming to pick up refugees and shuttle them away.
[I'll tell you what the mystery is: It's called GENOCIDE!]
i've no proof, or confirmation, but i remember seeing one short article about some inmates who'd been released during the flood, but were not locatable afterwards(duh!).
i'd think this would at least be an excuse to restrain so many people, if a weak one.
would the PTB be unwilling to admit that they released hundreds of inmates, even if it meant containing thousands of innocent victims?
BTW- i can't help but put some responsibility on those who stayed....they did have a WEEK's warning.
I read about conditions inside the Superdome and I am reading about a space-age slaveship. I see footage of people streaming across the bridge to the West Bank and I think about the days in which the slaves were 'freed' and walked the roads of the South with nothing and nowhere to go. People around here are expressing their horror and outrage. "I have been crying," one co-worker told me, "crying and crying..."
For myself, I have felt dizzy and off-kilter since Sunday. And right now I realize that what I am feeling is shame, on behalf of myself and the people in this country, who know better but do not put their actions where their words are.
One of the great fictions of the past thirty years indulged in by whites is that all those nasty race problems are in the past. Now some of our best friends are black. I can't say how many times I've been in rooms where whites were displaying their friendships with blacks like badges of pc honor. I have indulged in the same thing myself.
It's clear from the stricken faces in that footage that on some level blacks bought into that deadly fiction too. They wander from spot to spot, waiting for the help they assume will come. It doesn't.
I don't see why any black, except out of sheer compassion, should give any white the time of day. It sure doesn't surprise or appal me that gun stores would be broken into. A lot of the 'armed thugs' are doing the real relief work on the ground.
It is like tearing off a bandage really fast, but it is good that this festering sore is exposed. I vaguely and vainly hope that now at last there can be some truth-telling here, some redress here, some sort of initiative on the part of privileged people to get real about their racism and the part it plays in both their 'good works' and their evil deeds across this planet.
But the crippling inability to act in response to this crisis tells volumes about the diseased soul of the United States. These years of being spoon-fed unreality has ill-prepared us for the all-too real drama of 300 years of history playing out before our eyes. This is the shadow-side of "spreading democracy across the world," of "they hate us for our freedom,' of "you're either with us or against us," because who, precisely is "us"?
We are forced to see how racism and imperialism and capitalism intertwine, how they really cannot be considered separately. If we are appalled by the non-response to the suffering of a city of blacks, how can we not also see Iraq as for the first time, especially since it is crystal-clear that resources are being drained away from this country in order for it to inflict untold unnatural disasters there? Maybe now we can see Fallujah and Baghdad as real cities populated by real people who have also suffered sweltering heat with no power, no food, no water, and the same acute psychological suffering we see on the faces of New Orleans orphans and refugees. Maybe all of our victims can become human to us at last.
Maybe this is like Emmett Till's open casket; maybe decent people will find themselves forced to respond, but these are different days. Unless the media itself makes a turn, before too long people's attentions will be drawn elsewhere. The problem with pushing Bush and company too far is that we run the risk of another 'terrorist attack.' Maybe the ability to contemplate the unimaginable, that we may very well have a government fully capable of engaging in terrorism against its own citizens, will develop in time.
Meanwhile, there are hundreds and maybe thousands of people trapped in their attics, the water up to their necks as it's been for days, dying. Certainly, the whole world is watching, and what they see is the blustering bullies exposed for the cowards they are. And I feel shame, not that my country's dirty underwear is showing, but something a whole lot more personal. I have written a lot of words about racism and privilege and this and that, but like most whites, fall far short in the integrity department. Well at least I know better. Time to put my flabby shoulder to the wheel.
No doubt-- this is criminal, and I only hope that this outrage gets people motivated to actually change something in this country.
At this point I have to think this whole thing was planned in some evil way.
Fuckers.
gee, yet another attack on the "United States". do you liberal America-haters ever stop to think that maybe it is the whole system that stinks, and not just one country????
stop acting like America made the world evil.
this is an AMERICAN tragedy. stop co-opting it to make some totally unrelated point about social injustice.
finally, i have friends who happen to be of a different race than me. it isn't pandering, or fake. most friendships aren't.
anyone who lives in or evangelzes such tripe is part of the problem, not the solution. the issue in New Orleans is POVERTY, not race.
"the issue in New Orleans is POVERTY, not race."
Gee, it's pretty to think so, isn't it? Lets us white folks right off the hook.
"...let's us white folks off the hook..."
why are "white folks" on the hook to begin with? does anyone believe that things would be different if they were all poor white people?
seriously, stop beating yourself up over being white. start raising hell because people are being mistreated and let to die, not because they're black or white.
like Mike said:"It doesn't matter if you're black or white..."
right?
PS- if it WAS race isue, would tens of thousands already be evacuated and in the support system? surely, the GREAT WHITE MASTERS would have made things harder on the "enemy" if that was the case.
again, this has everything to do with disregard for the welfare of the poor. if those were black millionaires, they wouldn't be sitting there. they wouldn't be there if they were even slightly solvent.
Geraldo was actually in a real moment and it was ol' "Shep" who had to break the news that there was, in his words, a CHECKPOINT where they would be turned back, but one can only assume the guard at said checkpoint had received Blanco's SHOOT TO KILL orders.
If you think that race is NOT an issue and this gov't gives one paltry turd about poor blacks - blacks of any sort (other than the scrubbed up Condis & Colins) - maybe they wouldn't have DEPRIVED THEM OF THE VOTE these last 5 years.
Maybe they wouldn't have given Hyatt Hotel employees & guests dibs on a bus ride out of the fetid hell of NOLA if impoverished blacks were somehow significant in the eyes of our mutual oppressors
The reason it's race is because poor whites are stupid enough to support Bush against their best interests.
Superdome Astrodome & Convention Center are not and never have been shelters. They are and continue to be internment camps.
Paula Zahn was talking about (with some degree of shock) the real possibility of "restoring order" Old West style at the convention center. Her on the ground correspondent responded something like "well, uh, not just yet, we need to wait & see, etc"
CNN had that ridiculous concert for Katrina victims last night, Neveille Bros & Marsalises playing to a grinning Glenn Close, clapping along 'bout when the Saints Go Marching In.
This is why history is important. Why are disproportionate numbers of poor people black? The thing I've learned in studying the past thousand years of European history is that it's always about race. A few exceptions do not prove the rule.
I'm not beating myself up. To the contrary I am reclaiming my humanity.
A big piece of privilege is that we expect to feel pretty comfortable most of the time. It is exactly this that accounts for US people's non-response to the criminal activities of their government. If we have to change our lives in reponse, forget it.
Please consider:
If you buy into the myth that “the racial divide” is the root cause of this insanity, you are letting the billionaires and trillionaires off the hook. You are aiding and abetting the plans of the cheap-labor predators who intend to own the world. You are doing their work for them.
The fact that billionaires and trillionaires are allowed to exist is killing us all and this planet (yet they are allowed to walk around in plain sight). It’s way overdue for this species to make a promethian mastering of money. Good servant/bad master. Let the extreme extreme economic injustice continue…hold onto an inequity factor currently in the billions just in case your ship might be coming in…and the Galactic Council will soon be forced to choose into which black hole the ashes of earth will have to be directed.
You are very powerful. Simply ignore this message, and you will maintain the vast, unnecessary suffering of the human race, escalating soon to planet extinction.
"BTW- i can't help but put some responsibility on those who stayed....they did have a WEEK's warning."
Yeah I noticed this about the Iraqis, they had warnings for years that a war was coming, I mean, the bombs started falling before the war even hit...Hello?
Annalivia,
It;s not that I disagree with you, but I don't think it's possible to separate the issues of robber baron capitalism and racism. Where did the 'capital' in capitalism come from but the pillage of the non-white world, which of course continues?
I think it is dangerous for a relatively privileged white like myself to think of the corporate imperialists as 'them' in opposition to virtuous me. The fact is that through no choice of my own, I materially benefit directly from their wickedness, and what's more, my taxes pay for it.
I cannot believe this. Why won't they let those poor people leave? Why won't they let people with boats rescue those who are probably barely clinging to life on their rooftops and attics, waiting for help?
Why in God's name won't they let other countries help us? The only plausible reason I can think of is that they don't want other counties (especially their military personnel) to be here when the next MIHOP takes place, which I have a feeling is coming soon. The anniversary of September 11 is coming soon and I am very scared about what is going to happen next.
Ever notice how the people who are saying that it's never a race issue are never people of color themselves?
Community to Community by Carol Wolman
Mendocino is a small impoverished rural community in Northern California, far away from the flood waters inundating Louisiana and Mississippi. Yet we are doing what we can to help.
Our local Veterans for Peace (VfP) group has set up a kitchen and camp near Covington LA, supported entirely by contributions from the Mendocino community. They have named their spot Camp Casey, in honor of Casey Sheehan, a soldier killed in Iraq. Here's how the chapter president, Patrick Tate, describes what they are doing:
This is a community which has been hit hard by Katrina. The white
half of the community has been getting help with little going to the poor
and black community (MRE's). We have no cell phone service here and are dependent entirely on our internet access through the (VfP) bus satellite system.
It is apparent that we have a mountain to move here, but the community is
beginning to pull together with us. We have taken over their park with
their help and are helping each other out. People have brought out rakes
and other tools to clean up and make our own space "People's Park". The
sense of community is astounding, everyone comes looking for a handout
and we tell them we want them to pull together with us and they are doing it.
I can't help but agree with Rootsie and the anonymous (10:33) writer (whom I wish would take a name, since his/her comments certainly don't expose them to any real danger).
Their disagreement is ilustrative of the dissonance that has kept Ameican race relations stagnant these past couple hundred years.
Speaking of racism somehow makes one an "America Hater," and denying the pervasion of racism somehow makes one a racist. Paradoxically, both assertions are true just as both are false.
It's a stalemate with no discernable solution. I have no solution, myself, because I've encountered the stubborness of advocates on both sides of that issue, just as I've been forced to face my own limitations of persuasion.
I do have insight, however, which readers are welcome to accept or reject as they wish. What I hope is that at least a few might take the opportunity to wonder why we find ourselves in such a sorry state. Surely we can all agree that the state of race relations is sorry, for whatever reason, can't we?
My insight comes from growing up in a lower middle-class neighborhood where race was secondary, survival was utmost.
My neighbors were blacks, whites, latinos, filipinos -- you name it. The economic realities made race a non-issue. The things one owned defined one's status. And if one's family had few things, then toughness made up the difference. It was a two-pronged status system: Acquire much and your popularity was assured; show a willingness to inflict violence on others, or return violence for violence, and you had another kind of stature, one with value equal to material wealth.
My family had little of material value to offer, and, being a quick study, I learned early that one NEVER backed down from a fight. It was my only currency, and I held it as dearly as any millionaire might hold his portfolio.
My 45 years have since taught me that any currency - no matter its form -- must be invested wisely and never spent without thought for its value in any given market.
The meaning of all this? I grew up in a tough neighborhood where race was sometimes used as a weapon (I've been called honky, cracker, white boy, at least as often as I've named my niggers. But such name-calling had very limited value. Because race was a superficial circumstance, and we all sensed it, ever if we didn't know it. Money and power, in their various transmogrifications, were the source of true stature.
So, perhaps you can see how I can agree with both Rootsie and Anonymous in their assertions. My intimate experience with racism and poverty has provided me a very practical view of it. But my current knowledge hasn't come without study beyond the rudimentaries gained from childhood. Such expeience has motivated me to learn its more complex meanings. Not a day passes when I am not confronted with some sampling of its various forms.
What is happening in New Orleans is both a class and a race issue. And god knows what motives lay beneath the surface. But I feel a need to limit my observations to class/race. It's true, as Anonymous states, this inaction on the part of the government is due at least in part to the class of the people affected. But when was the last time the poor whites of Oklahoma were allowed to rot for days in the wreckage of their mobile homes following a tornado? A rhetorical question, to be sure, but I welcome any answer that helps shed light on my opinion.
I suggest the answer is never. What is happening in NO is unprecedented in my lifetime. And it raises so many questions in my mind that I am swooning from my quest for answers
Anonymous: Racism exists; no matter how many black friends you may acquire. To deny it is to hold up the discussion and, ultimately, the solution.
Rootsie: Racism is not the sole cause of what's happening in southern Louisianna. To assert as much is to miss the point.
Racism is a sub set of classism. It has been so since the genesis of this country, and quite possibly before
We (the lower 90 percent of the economic "pyramid") have been manipulated by racism to pit us against one another. What better way to assure we will never join as one? A united underclass is THE GREATEST FEAR of the wealthy. I know this appears as recycled socialist propaganda to most. So be it. Much of what the socialist movement espoused throughout the 19th and 20th centuries was spot on, though their movements have been largely assigned to the scap pile, and not without the help of the capitalist-controlled media.
If you want to read about some of these efforts, I strongly suggest you read, or re-read, Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States". Zinn's extensive bibliography will provide an abundance of additional sources.
Note to Anonymous 10:27:
"BTW- i can't help but put some responsibility on those who stayed....they did have a WEEK's warning."
I know you can't help but blame the victims. You suffer from an affliction of ignorance that threatens to overshadow the real causes of this post-catastrophic catastrophe. Empathy is a learned condition. Lack of empathy is ignorance. Two years ago an old man who lived in an apartment below mine forgot his dinner on the stove. The resultant fire destroyed all I owned. It was december, a cold rain was falling. I had, at most, three minutes from the time I discovered the fire and the time I had to evacuate my home. As I stood outside in an alleyway watching the flames lick from the window near where I knew my computer and musical instruments were kept, I wept. It was all gone and there was nothing I could do about it. I had no savings and but a few dollars in my pocket. I walked a mile to my sister's house and slept on her couch that night. What would I have done if my family had not been nearby? Or, as better fits the circumstances in New Orleans, what if my sister had been in the same sinking boat? No doubt, in your mind, I would have been to blame for my own misfortune. Perhaps you're right. In my world, it doesn't matter.
Rootsie,
>>The thing I've learned in studying the past thousand years of European history is that it's always about race.
If you've studied a thousand years of European history, then surely you're aware that race has little to do with it. Long before Caucasiondom was exploiting and starving the dark-skinned heathens of Santo Domingo and the Gold Coast (which they did not so much because those people were dark-skinned and heathen, but simply because they happened to be the people who were there), the European "well-born" were exploiting and starving the "base" and low-born" of their own countries, who were every bit as white and Christian as the "nobles" themselves.
Are you familiar with the droit du seigneur or jus primae noctis, the gabelle, and the corvée? No dark faces were in the infuriated mobs that followed Wat Tyler, Jack Cade, and the Jacquerie; no dark faces tore down the Bastille or were gunned down on the steps of the Winter Palace. Southern planters, when they weren't working their black property to death, didn't come up with the phrase "white trash" as a term of endearment to coax those shaggy wild-eyed white brutes from the back country to come sip juleps with them on the veranda.
I don't think there's any question that, given a choice between black faces and white faces, the gentlefolk find it a bit more congenial to afflict the black ones; nor is there any question that they have used the race card with great success to keep the multitude from uniting against them (and in fact some members of the multitude are plenty eager and willing to let themselves be played in this way). I don't think there's any question that the blackness of the afflicted Gulf Coast region makes it a bit easier for a substantial portion of White America to say "oh, well" and swallow the outrage they might otherwise feel; although I'm not sure we'll ever see real, genuine, universal outrage over any incident such as this unless the incident is so pervasive and enormous as to reach into every community and touch everyone directly. It's human nature for most people to seek the comfortable equilibrium of complacency as long as it's not the ox in your very own backyard who's being gored.
I agree with you that racism remains a very real and pervasive problem in America today, and that you and I, as white Americans, do benefit from it simply by the act of being born; just as black Americans, even those born in prosperous and well-connected families, are automatically imposed with a handicap in this country because of the color of their skin. But racism is fundamentally a problem on a horizontal, rather than a vertical, level. The Powers That Be oppress minorities not so much because they inherently prefer to -- as European history shows, they'll happily oppress fellow whites if there's no one else around -- but simply because it's one of the easiest ways in America to "divide and conquer", which has been a popular and successful technique at least since the Romans realized that there were a godawful amount of militant barbarians over the Rhine and the Danube, and surely much earlier.
In short, if all the non-white people in America somehow packed up and moved away tomorrow, the situation in America would not substantially change. The ultrawealthy and the sons of privilege would still need to trample on the mass, regardless of how white the mass might be, and they would find some other superficial distinction on which to establish a divide.
Two next-door neighbors (or neighboring societies). One, a black who hates whites. The other, a white who hates blacks. Each would destroy the other if they could…if they could only have the power to do so. Each knows that if they can get rich enough, they will have that power, because the weathpowerful have always written the laws. Outright murder is illegal, but there are a million ways to destroy someone through the human economics we play to the death every day…and those ways are currently legal.
Now, which is do-able…..remove hatred and bigotry from their hearts and minds?
Oh, WOULDN’T that be nice! What a lovely WISH! Let’s all give our energies and voices to wiping out racism. We will get ourselves a good reputation for doing that, and we will call ourselves good, even though we are not doing what would solve the problem. The problem being poor quality of life.
No one hating you for the color of your skin is delicious, but it does not contain many calories. Stomachs need calories to survive. Got one? Thought so.
Or this: legislate for everyone’s protection that neither neighbor may take more from society than they gave to it through the sacrifice of their time and energies to do work.
They both live in physical bodies and have the same number of hours in a day, which means they have absolute limits on how much work they can do, no matter how much they wish to earn. The discrepancy between the amount of their inputs is therefore limited. If they are paid equitably for their inputs, neither one can accumulate the kind of wealthpower that will allow them to harm the other, because he cannot possibly out-earn his neighbor by a factor that would allow him license to harm. If everyone receives what they themselves earned, no one has the wealth that someone else earned but did not receive.
They are diabolically stupid to wish to harm an other, because that is the quickest and surest way to invite harm to oneself, but they don’t seem to realize this. (Even though any five-year-old will slug back when he is slugged.)
What’s in their heads and hearts cannot hurt the rest of us, if their ability to have their way is sanely restricted.
They can go on hating each other for the jerks they are forever, for all I care…
As long as they are prevented from giving me a violent neighborhood to live in. I want all the happiness and safety I can get. For purely self-interested reasons, I want to harm no one. It is complete sanity to be concerned about my own best interests. Shall I not care for myself…leaving you to do it for me?
The idea is so simple. Such simple justice. I ache that I cannot seem to express it better.
How is it we live our lives immersed in commerce every second, yet don’t see the essentiality of economic…wealthpower…justice?
I can only urge you to pursue your happiness with every nerve and every second, people.
Murder the idea of having wealthpower giants, who cannot even see the ants they step on, no matter what flavor they are.
I agree with you AnnaLivia. But I also believe the wealthy and powerful have at least a passing interest in the "flavor" of the ants they trample under foot. Pitting flavor vs. flavor helps keep us divided and there has been a very conscious effort on the part of the puppetmasters to divide the races.
Those of us on this board who continue to deny this essential fact are simply dancing to another of the tunes in the vast library of anthems maintained by the wealthy.
"I'm not a racist," is but a variation on the post modern hit, "racism has been defeated," made popular by the neo-con right.
Even the invention of the so-called "neo-con right" has served as a tool to divide us into "conservative" and "liberal, "religiouos" and "secular," "blue state" "red state."
Our true status as laborers/consumers for the capitalists has been all but buried by such superficialities.
Will we ever see past these false divisions to the commonalities that bind us all together? That has been the struggle for ages, and like those (failed) generations past, we are free to free ourselves. Will we?
http://www.blackcommentator.org/radio_bc/090205/new_orleans_090205.mp3
Jillian, the converse to your little thought exercise re minorities disappearing is this: If all the robber barons suddenly disappeared tomorrow, would societal racism vanish along with them?
Hmm.
I want to believe that they would -- I'd LOVE to buy into that, but part of the evil of racism is that it plays into and exploits basic lizard-brain issues of "the other" and self preservation that ALL people have.
I think the reality is a little knottier and more intertwined than you suppose, and the fact that the two things that made much of Western culture what it is are slavery and imperialsit genocide -- both predicated on racism, which as you seem to agree trumps class differences every time.
I just mean to say that I don't think you can separate the issues of American Capitalism and racism. I think they're intertwined, like the amino acids in a strand of DNA.
You can't minimize one without misunderstanding the other.
Blackcommentator.org certainly has it right that human agency will be used to conduct another massive wealth-grab via land values through the vehicle of for-profits-to-the-few insurance schemes in New Orleans. (He has a thrilling voice, too.)
Jeff,
Although I enjoyed seeing you use one of my favorite movie quotes of all time (for those who missed the reference, in "Stepford Wives" when the woman about to be Stepfordized asks the head guy in charge of the process "Why are you doing this?" he replies "BECAUSE WE CAN") which I myself have often used in connection with BushCo, the phrase "BECAUSE THEY CAN" is misleading.
It should be "BECAUSE WE LET THEM."
There are more of us than them and they can only function with our consent--and our tax money.
Next:
I cannot believe we are arguing over whether it's racism or classism or both. Of course it's both! Anyone who says it's 'only' classism has never been a nicely dressed 30ish male well off attorney who is followed around a KMart by security (on the assumption he's a homeboy out to steal a Gameboy), or stopped and asked to show registration for his Lexus (on the suspicion he's a car thief) or simply asked to show ID on the street of a lily white suburb (they call it "Walking While Black.")
Even if it ruins your day, my friends, until you face that this country was founded not ONLY on racism and classism but ALSO on it in addition to political ideals of liberty and self governance, you are part of the problem.
The United States of America was founded on land stolen from the indigenous inhabitants--not just stolen like you'd lift a wallet, often those inhabitants were slaughtered or rounded up into internment camps we now call 'the rez.'
It was built on the backs of indentured servants, black slaves, underpaid and discriminated-against immigrants who had to claw their way up, whether it was my Irish great grandfather with his 7 kids who came in steerage and laid bricks while his teenage son laid them beside him and his daughters worked as hotel maids and learned dressmaking and millinery, or the FOB immigrant who arrived yesterday with $75 and a cot in a relative's garage. The fact that those who were ABLE to claw their way up are now middle or even upper class does not take away from the fact that the plutocrats whether Virginia farmers who restricted the franchise or robber barons or Kennebunkport oil men did their best to KEEP THEM from getting a living wage.
Again--historical amnesia. Americans don't know or don't care or don't want to admit where they came from so they can't possibly know where they are or how to get somewhere better.
Buddha once gave a sermon in which he tied a cloth in knots/
"Lord Buddha said, I have tried this way and that way to untie the knots. How would you loose them Ananda? My lord, Ananda replied, I would first study the knot and find out how it was tied, then it could be easily untied. The lord Buddha said, right you are Ananda. If you wish to untie a knot you must first know how it was tied."
I'd suggest we figure out how the knot was tied FAST before it slips around our own necks.
To "Anonymous" 3:22:
Of course societal racism wouldn't vanish along with the robber barons, and I'm surprised that you seem to think I'm suggesting that it would, since I did state my opinion that racism fundamentally operates on a horizontal level, not a vertical one: in other words, racism is something that exists within people themselves and divides them against each other; it is not something that's handed down from above, although the powers at the top definitely take advantage of it. But perhaps the sentence wasn't sufficiently explicit to make the point clear to you, in which case I apologize for not being a more lucid writer.
I don't disagree with you at all that American capitalism and racism are intertwined, but I think your metaphor of twin strands of DNA is not as accurate as, say, the metaphor of a dyed cloth. Racism is certainly the dye that gives the cloth of American capitalism its coloring, and racism cannot now be separated from that cloth; but in the final analysis the cloth exists and functions just the same irrespective of whether it is dyed or not. You say that two things that made much of Western culture what it is are slavery and imperialist genocide, and this is definitely true, but only for the past 500 years. For a thousand years before that the two things that made much of Western culture what it was were feudalism and serfdom over fellow whites. For a thousand years before that the Roman wealthy oppressed fellow Romans who happened to be plebs.
I do not at all intend to minimize the importance of racism in American capitalism, or to deny the cruelty and injustice and pervasiveness of racism in America. But if you're claiming that America is capitalist because it is racist, or that it's racism that makes American capitalists act as they do, I think you're wrong. Capitalists oppress because it is in their nature to oppress and they profit by it. In America it has always been advantageous to them to work racism into it, but racism is not the primum mobile of their behavior. If Caucasians were all they had to work on they would just as happily work on Caucasians. Focusing too narrowly on the racist component of their behavior loses sight of the more fundamental principles that are at work. That is the point I was trying to make.
It's a class war, but there are certain "untermenschen" groups that are easier to scapegoat and take out. Do not for a MOMENT think that if the 'poorest of the poor' in New Orleans were all white trash/crackers that BushCo could have gotten away with what they did this week. HELL no because that same trashcracker might be a fundy attached to an influential church that's part of Bush's base, or have a good ole boy cousin who's sat on Trent Lott's front porch when he still had one.
Black skin is also a marker that is easy to shoot at. I'm not black, but I've had the opposite experience, of being the only white person in a sea of black people, and it is a very unsettling feeling to know that everyone knows you are not 'one of them.'
If it had been all white people in that Convention Center and people read that 5 babies had died in it after coming there to be SAVED you tell me that there wouldn't have been a national shitstorm that would have gotten those people out in nothing flat. Instead the poor MOSTLY BLACK crowd waited while the well heeled and I will bet ALL OR MOSTLY WHITE Hyatt group cut in front of them and, with the National Guard HELPING THEM WITH THEIR LUGGAGE, got on a bus and away they went.
Those folks at the Convention Center didn't have LUGGAGE my friends, and when some tried to leave, preferring to rely on their own two legs and the grace of God to quit the dying City they were told to get back or they would be SHOT.
I don't know if there were snipers, or if so if they were planted, but I do know that if I had lost everything and been abandoned by my country and menaced by troops who were as likely as not to shoot my black ass as hand me a water bottle if I showed my face, I might well hole up in some building and take out as many white faces, especially those in fatigues, as I could get before I ran out of ammo. There is nothing on earth more dangerous than a man (or woman) who has a loaded gun and NOTHING MORE LEFT TO LOSE.
The wonder is that the vast majority of these poor abandoned souls remained peaceful and didn't tear the first group of soldiers who showed up without food or buses into pieces--or EAT THEM. I don't know if you've ever been really, really hungry, but a nice plump soldier would probably look pretty good to you after 5 or 6 days with nothing to put in your stomach but empty promises that stuck in your craw.
It is my operating theory for the moment that the oil companies in the delta/New Orleans area desired to see the destruction of the city so they could have the area all for themselves and would not have to compromise with environmentalists and NO residents on how to provide protection of the area from storm surges and hurricanes and such. There was a consortium of interest groups in 2002 that sat down together and hammered out a compromise solution on how to best do such work involving the levees and the endangered wetlands protecting the city (PBS's NOW had a good program on it Friday evening), but it has been deliberately ignored and funding denied by Bush and the Republicans in Congress. Hastert's remark about New Orleans "not being worth restoring" just confirms this theory in my mind.
Jeff, the Red Cross Disaster FAQ page to which you linked is a mock-up. It looks identical to the Red Cross's Disaster FAQ page, but the content is much different. The Red Cross IS in New Orleans.
Response to Jillian Burdigala:
Of course you are right. I should have said that European history is always about "the Other". In his Culture and Imperialism. Edward Said explores the degree to which Europe defined itself in opposition to this 'other.' We just have to look at a map to see why this would be. Since the Crusades, the European construct of race has played a central role in the development of 'Europeanness.'
If all the non-white people packed and moved away we would probably be facing the same problems--yes, but that is not the situation. Since race has taken on such a monstrous reality, we have to deal. I know you wouldn't disagree.
cassandra: I'm not interested in a debate about race and class.
My point is that class can easily be used as a way not to consider race, since it is an uncomforatble conversation for many whites.
Response to Jillian Burdigala:
Of course you are right. I should have said that European history is always about "the Other". In his Culture and Imperialism. Edward Said explores the degree to which Europe defined itself in opposition to this 'other.' We just have to look at a map to see why this would be. Since the Crusades, the European construct of race has played a central role in the development of 'Europeanness.'
If all the non-white people packed and moved away we would probably be facing the same problems--yes, but that is not the situation. Since race has taken on such a monstrous reality, we have to deal. I know you wouldn't disagree.
cassandra: I'm not interested in a debate about race and class.
My point is that class can easily be used as a way not to consider race, since it is an uncomforatble conversation for many whites.
Q: Why do dogs lick their balls?
A: BECAUSE THEY CAN
Since the right wing has taken control more and more it seems that they use their new position to lick their balls in public.
Everyone's talking about white vs. black. White folks, quit beating yourselves up. It's not a "race issue," primarily. The issue is not black or white, OR left vs. right, it's wrong vs. right and strong vs. weak. Race enters the equation secondarily, but more as a symptom, not the cause. AFricans and Indians were the convenient groups to exploit, mainly because they were comparatively unarmed and unorganized. Hence they became the mainstay of the underclass. But the principle is class. If no Africans had ever been brought here, the face of this tragedy would be poor and white, and it would be no less evil. And make no mistake, they ARE coming after you too. The many poor white victims in NOLA and other areas have found that their whiteness did not in any way protect them.
I think race is mainly a diversion. Someone said:
"We (the lower 90 percent of the economic "pyramid") have been manipulated by racism to pit us against one another. What better way to assure we will never join as one? A united underclass is THE GREATEST FEAR of the wealthy. "
That is the very reason why we shouldn't be fixated on race in this issue.
If you emphasize black vs. white, you may find yourself divided against your potential allies. I'm black, but I'm not about to vilify good white folks -- I need all the friends I can get. I want a united resistance to form, but I'm afraid the hyperfocus on race (along with that other, largely phony divide, left/right) will prevent that from happening.
What's good for Americans is good for black Americans. What's bad for black Americans is bad for Americans. And so, I remain,
africkinamerican.
@ africkinamerican
Stupid Fucking White Man says:
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