The Black Commentator is back with its usual straight-talking, hard-hitting analysis of white supremacy in the USA.
The new issue has three pieces on post-Katrina USA that cut through the BS:
Thulani Davis on the “Unbearable crime on the Mississippi:
When I woke up today, the only thought that came to mind was Reverend Jesse Jackson’s indignant cry, “This is the bottom of the slave ship we are looking at.”
I think Jesse actually put his finger on what happened to all of us this week. Those shots we’ve seen are, as he said, the bottom of the slave ships. I think that really goes to why all the rest of us watching are so traumatized. And I think it is necessary to repeat what he has said about how the people in this country have a high tolerance for viewing “black pain.” Yes, while we are asking the unheard question as to why a third of New Orleans’ population is poor and all black, everyone from the president on down is comfortable with these realities of our ongoing unemployment, overcrowding, homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction, neighborhood crime and despair.
…The people in charge have the capacity to tolerate scenes of suffering they know have been suffered by blacks for generations…
Tim Wise on “Blasphemy about New Orleans: A god with whom I’m not familiar”:
…And if God is even half as tired as I am of having to listen to self-righteous bastards like you blame the victims of this nightmare for their fate, then you had best eat slowly from this point forward.
Why didn’t they evacuate like they were told?
Are you serious?
There were 100,000 people in that city without cars. Folks who are too poor to own their own vehicle, and who rely on public transportation every day. I know this might shock you. They don’t have a Hummer2, or whatever gas-guzzling piece of crap you either already own or probably are saving up for.
And no, they didn’t just choose not to own a car because the buses are so gosh-darned efficient and great, as Rush Limbaugh implied, and as you likely heard, since you’re the kind of person who hangs on the every word of such bloviating hacks as these.…
Scottie Lowe on America’s pretenses washed away”:
Everyone has been affected by the news of Hurricane Katrina and it’s victims who happen to be largely of color. The media has made no attempt to hide its racist practices by portraying the economically disenfranchised Black people that live there, whose lives have been devastated and destroyed, as thugs, criminals, and lawless rouges while the fairer “victims” of Katrina are portrayed as helpless and defenseless survivors trapped in dehumanizing conditions. Down in Louisiana, with its vicious racist policies that allowed 30 percent of New Orleans’ residents of color to live below an acceptable standard of living and educational opportunity, with its governor having her lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, calling her own devastated constituents hoodlums and lawbreakers, the receding waters have revealed a frightening reality in this so-called land of opportunity…
I guess people want to save their prayers and petitions for causes all America can rally around, not just the Black people. Where was the emergency midnight session for Congress to pass illegal legislation like they did with one white woman who was already dead while thousands of living people suffered without food and water? Will America wear brown ribbons as a show of support for the flood victims of Katrina? I think not. It is with this faith that we as a nation will be able to hew out of the cesspool of despair a drop of hope.
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