1115.org

What do you see when you look at this photo (via Ian)?
Some see a group of people who have just lost what few possessions they had, are terrified about their immediate future, and need help from their fellow Americans. Others see an undesirable minority, a zero-sum political football best punted as far down field as possible. Take a good look, it’s one or the other.

With so much media attention focused on the White House for their failed response and abdicated responsibility in the face of Hurricane Katrina, the racist side of the aisle brimmed with the activity of hatred, fear, intimidation, and elimination:

Mark Williams: “They didn’t have the necessary brains and common sense to get out of the way of a Cat 5 Hurricane….The only role race plays in this is that the American black population has been the prototype for an entire race of people being, being turned into a group of dependents of the government — trapped there, I’m using that word very loosely are screaming we want help, we want help.”

Rep. Tom DeLay, chatting with a couple of young evacuees who are now living in a tent in Houston: “Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?”

Steve Sailer: “In contrast to New Orleans, there was only minimal looting after the horrendous 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan — because, when you get down to it, Japanese aren’t blacks.”

Rep. Richard Baker: “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.”

Sen. Rick Santorum: “There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving.”

Barbara Bush: “So many of the people here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.”

Robert Tracinski: “But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don’t, because they don’t own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.”

Intriguing comments from members of a party whose chairman has been taking great pains to verbally disassociate them from the decades-long Southern Strategy, the racist bedrock of the Republican majority. But they wouldn’t be unreconstructed racists if they passed up an opportunity to pander to their base in a cheap attempt to staunch the President’s bleeding approval ratings while African Americans numbering in the tens of thousands languished on rooftops, sweltered on Astroturf, and floated face-down in polluted floodwater.

Cable talk and the Sunday morning shows have been repeatedly making the odd distinction that Katrina and the inadequate response that followed exposed class fissures rather than racial ones. As explicitly demonstrated above in the words of Williams and Sailer and implicitly by the others, race is at the center of it. While it’s true that wealth directly correlated to swift evacuation, race and class cannot be separated in New Orleans or just about anywhere else in this country. Not too many white people in the Upper Nine, Desire, Caliope or Magnolia, just as there was a relative absence of white faces running the gauntlet in the Superdome.

The blame the victim game is certainly not new, just particularly offensive when accompanied by a body count. “They choose to be poor,” “They are mentally inferior,” “They’re lazy,” wash, rinse, repeat. In an attempt to rile me up a bit, Rob sent me this link wherein a 22-year-old kid thinks he has it all figured out:

repeat after me: everyone in the world is responsible for everything in their own life. your life is your own, to do with as you choose…i’m tired of people making excuses for the poor…if you’re poor as a way of life (as opposed to a temporary condition), i can see no other explanation than stupidity, laziness, unwillingness to learn and better yourself, or any/all of the above. this is america - i just fail to see how you can fuck it up if you’re actually trying.

Obviously, this betrays a dangerous level of ignorance about how this country actually works in 2005. Class inequality has increased in tandem with the poverty rate each year that George W. Bush has been President, yet he continually sends budgets to Congress that cut or eliminate programs designed to help the poor. Corporate welfare and tax cuts that disproportionately favor the rich have created conditions that have held wages down in order to increase profits. Long-term unemployment has never been higher, but calls to extend unemployment benefits have fallen on deaf ears. No Child Left Behind, the President’s attempt at education reform, was based on a failure in Texas and has been nothing but a failure on the federal level, leading to states suing to be rid of it. Grants and loans for low income students have been evaporating at record pace. Food stamps have been on the chopping block while farm subsidies look sure to keep rising. And let’s not forget welfare reform, signed by a Democratic President, you know, that one who got a blow job in the Oval Office.

But even the clueless libertarians who say “fuck that, get a job” still have to contend with the cold hard facts of American racism:

Black applicants without criminal records are no more likely to get a job than white applicants just out of prison, according to a Princeton University study of nearly 1,500 private employers in New York City.

Imagine how much worse it is just about everywhere outside of NYC, especially in the deep south. Hard to pull yourself up by the bootstraps when you’re faced with battles like that.

On Monday, the President dismissed questions about the role of race in the Government’s response:

“My attitude is this: The storm didn’t discriminate, and neither will the recovery effort.”

This from a man who just days earlier signed an executive order suspending prevailing wage laws while at the same time awarding billions of dollars in contracts to his biggest campaign contributors. The poorest residents of New Orleans (if they are lucky enough) will be able to work for minimum wage rebuilding their former neighborhoods where they may not even be welcomed back.

And after making sure that friendly companies got paid off and ensuring that manual laborers (many of whom lost all of their possessions) make no more than minimum wage, the administration moved to Iraq-ify the contracts (WSJ sub.):

“The first large-scale contracts related to Hurricane Katrina, as in Iraq, were awarded without competitive bidding, and using so-called cost-plus provisions that guarantee contractors a certain profit regardless of how much they spend.”

This is what happens when rich Americans and businesses buy politicians. The compromised elected officials take care of their benefactors first and let the rest trickle down. Hmmm…trickle down, sounds familiar. People who can afford lawyers, lobbyists, advertising agencies and publicists simply play by different rules than those who can’t. The government shouldn’t be tilting the field further, yet that is exactly the pattern.

But it isn’t necessary to look at the past or the future to see the indecency with which the largely African American New Orleans underclass is being treated. Due to privatization of many FEMA responsibilities and the failed leadership of their retained functions, the poorest and blackest residents of New Orleans bore unnecessary suffering. National emergencies are not the time for private contractors to decide whether rescue/evacuation is profitible. In effect, New Orleanians were sacrificed for conservative ideology.

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina exposed shameful realities of American life. Somehow it has become more politically correct to say that class is more of an issue than race, but the two just can’t be unwound. There is room for conservative ideas. There is room for the rugged individualism that causes tents to be pitched in the trousers of libertarians everywhere. But welfare and handouts should be just as much of a problem for “conservatives” whether it goes to business or individuals. Blaming poor people for the suffering they endured because they weren’t able to evacuate is as unacceptable as stacking the deck in favor of industry to the disadvantage of the already disadvantaged.

If you looked at the photo and thought about where your wallet is or agreed with any of the quotes, it might be time to come to grips with the fact that you’re a racist.

K-Otix out of Houston flipped Kanye’s “Golddigger (RMX)” with new lyrics about the Katrina response. Well worth a listen especially if you don’t get the title of this post. Link 1 / Link 2 / Link 3