Our freedom of speech and press is a blessing and a curse. Our TV, newspapers and magazines show everything, warts and all. But it isn’t just Americans who see those warts. It was a sea of poor, almost entiredly black faces in New Orleans during the disaster that appeared daily on TV screens during the disaster. The Brits saw those same images and read the commentaries. It got them wondering about their own growing racial divide.
So the US has become not only the standard of wealth, but also that of racial division to which everyone compares itself. How comforting it is that we can be so helpful to the world.
The London Times
The Commission for Racial Equality says segregation in Britain is going the way of New Orleans.…most Britons cannot name a “single good friend” from a different race and that many young people from ethnic minorities have no friends beyond their own community. “We are divided physically, economically, culturally and psychologically.”
Britain’s sleepwalk to segregation may lead to a similar rude awakening: “When the hurricane hits — and it could be recession rather than natural disaster, for example — those communities are set up for destruction.”
Ironically, New Orleans may end up being less segregated in the future.
Working class exodus feared in New Orleans
Many of the black working-class and poor neighborhoods remain deluged in noxious flood water or coated in its putrid residue and populated mostly by dragonflies and National Guardsmen.Former residents of these communities, evacuated around the country, are more likely to start life anew elsewhere.
That’s just great. I wonder what it says about us in the States that people in other countries can wipe the sweat of their foreheads and say, “Whew, at least we’re not as bad as those Americans!”
In Britain, the minorities aren’t just a different race, but a different nationality and culture as well. Most of the blacks are from the Caribbean and other minorities are primarily from India, Pakistan and Muslim countries, as well as how many ever Chinese could get out of Hong Kong when they could.
Paul
I agree with what you say with one caveat.
In New Orleans, 90% of the population was black. That alone skewed the television images. The slow and non-existent response was not because they were black, but because of the ineptness of the governments and Red Cross to respond promptly and effectively. When the Red Cross didn’t go into an area because they couldn’t get police or National Guard to accompany them, they didn’t go. The people waiting for help continued waiting while the “white led” organizations argued. I can see why some would cry racism, but only because they were the recipients of bungling.
That’s pretty funny. A bunch of non-minority people arguing about what is racism. How the hell would you know if you’ve never experienced the relentlessness of it? Shut the hell up. Yammering about what you haven’t experienced is called something else, ignorance. People denying it exists like you doofuses is why it still exists in the first place. Hopefully, if the universe has an ironic sense of humor, you’ll come back as an inner city black male & they’ll come back as the sheriff whose town you shouldn’t be driving through.
Not since the OJ Simpson verdict have the whites and the blacks seen an issue from such differing opinions. I remember just after the OJ vertict, standing next to a black guy and we were both reading a Newsweek cover story about OJ. I really wanted to say, “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee if you explain to me why blacks celebrate his aquittal.”
I’m too shy to do that! But with a little work, I think I now “get it” from a black perspective. I still don’t agree but I understand why so many black people saw that event differently than we whites did.
With this Katrina disaster, I think I understand why so many black people would see this as a highly racial event.
If the black view seems preposterous to you, then I recommend you try to see it from their perspective. It would really help race relations if more white people tried to at least understand why black people sometimes see things very differently that we whites do.