"Hey Buddy, wanna pick snowberries?" "Not today arctic puffin" Seeing that no natural disaster is complete without Jesse Jackson lobbing race bombs- he had this to say about Hurricane Amistad.
"Certainly I think the issue of race as a factor will not go away from this equation," the Rev. Jesse Jackson told CNN on Friday. "We have great tolerance for black suffering and black marginalization," he added. "And today those who are suffering the most, in fact, in New Orleans certainly are black people." Jackson, who was in New Orleans helping with the relief effort, described appalling conditions: "Today I saw 5,000 African-Americans on the I-10 causeway desperate, perishing, dehydrated, babies dying," he said. "It looked like Africans in the hull of a slave ship. It was so ugly and so obvious."Arguing that natural disasters are racist seems futile, so I'll focus on the general perception that the relief effort was somewhat "less intense" than it would have been had the survivors been... well.. not black.
While reading Arguing with Signposts, I found some interesting posts regarding the relief effort.
I think there’s plenty of blame to go around but we need some perspective here. First and foremost disaster preparedness is the responsibility of State and Local authorities - in this case LEMA (The Louisiana Emergency Management Agency). There is a state-wide director for disaster relief in every state, that person is called the Governor. There is a local director for disaster relief in every municipality, that person is called the Mayor. FEMA is a coordinating body that assists State and Local authorities in getting the resources they need. Because they are the “go to” people most folks are under the impression that they are in charge, and in fact if the State and Local authorities abdicate control over a disaster area they will take over. Typically after the initial response to a disaster the local guys do just that, leave FEMA in control. That’s because they have the experience and personnel to manage disasters of this scale.Disclosure: I’m a volunteer coordinator for MEMA (The Missouri Emergency Management Agency), I’ve been through three major floods and a few big storms that generated enough tornado damage to get the affected counties disaster relief. Believe me when I tell you what we are seeing from FEMA now is light years ahead of what I’ve seen from them in the past. Typically it took two to three days just to get the disaster declaration, then another two to three to get FEMA deployed, and of course by then the local guys had been on the ground working around the clock for five or six days and we were more than happy to dump everything in FEMA’s lap. That’s the way the system is designed. Bush saw that and tried to skip a few steps to speed things up, he pre-declared the areas disaster areas and that’s significant - I’ll explain later - but IMO what we are seeing in NO is the result of a convergence of factors:
First, the storm damage was bad, but the flooding has made relief efforts ten times harder than anything they could have imagined. Everyone knew that a Cat 4/5 storm could breach the levies, no one suspected that the breach would come from an internal canal flood wall that had just recently been upgraded. Second, Mayor Nagin’s performance has been absolutely pathetic. This is the worst case of poor planning and criminal incompetence I’ve ever seen. Like I said, Bush declared the gulf coast area a Federal Disaster area on Saturday - two days before Katrina hit. That freed up FEMA resources for local and state coordinators to call on and allowed for the pre-positioning of supplies so they could be rapidly deployed to the affected areas. If the Mayor and the Governor don’t take advantage of this opportunity Bush is to blame? Right. Mayor Nagin waited until the last minute to call for an evacuation of the city, but the poorest people could not evacuate - why weren’t school busses used to get them out of town? Mayor Nagin made the last minute decision to declare the Superdome and Convention centers as refuge relocation points - why weren’t they stocked with water, food, bedding, generators, and fuel? Why weren’t hospitals offered additional resources by the Mayors office? Mayor Nagin made the decision to allow looting and told the police to focus on Search and Rescue, but looting hinders S&R efforts (as we’ve seen) and no one I know could believe that decision. Hell, it’s emergency management 101, preserving order preserves life.
Like I said, there’s plenty of blame to go around, Blanco deserves her share too as, and honestly once FEMA realized that they were dealing with a boatload of incompetents they should have just taken over and let the locals bitch about “federal interference” to CNN, they’ll do that anyway, but ultimately IMO the real culprit in the aftermath here is Nagin, the man is criminally incompetent and should be removed from the scene before he causes more damage.
Hmmm... interesting, besides pushing a ten billion dollar relief bill through- it seems Bush *gasp* was more on top of the situation than local officials. Also, from the same place- "I was under the impression that New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin had signed a mandatory evacuation procedure on Saturday, Aug. 27. Turns out, he didn’t order such a mandatory evacuation until Sunday morning at 9:30 a.m. That’s less than 24 hours before landfall! As I’ve said several times, emergency management personnel have said for years that an evacuation of New Orleans would take AT LEAST 72 hours."
It's unfortuanate that HRC and other top democratic officials would seek to use misinformation for political gain while dead bodies float through the streets. But hey, far be it from politicians to let facts get in the way of catchy sound bites and soapbox hearings where they can fight over the scraps of public opinion and lobby for relief money for pet projects for their constituents...
and one more quote from Elf.
I made these with Zatarain's New Orleans Style Yellow Rice. posted by Justin at 12:02 PM 
6 Comments:
Jesse Jackson:
"We have great tolerance for black suffering and black marginalization."
True, or false? I'll let you take the "we" to mean any group you want--you, Americans, the world, politicians.
I like the way Jackson shows his in depth knowledge of world geography. Yes, the predominant ethnic group of suffering people in New Orleans are black. So are the suffering people of Namibia.
Chuck:
"Great" implies a contrast - I think we can agree Jackson means more tolerance for black suffering than for white. I disagree. I think it's a well known fact that Jesse Jackson makes a living off of racism. He perpetuates racism by drawing it out of any situation in which blacks and whites are involved, and if racism ended tomorrow the man would take to streets in protest to see that it continues. Jesse Jackson is not a crusader for black rights. He is a crusader for instigation - a person who seeks personal gain through publicity and power by blaming anyone else for every problem that strikes black Americans.
His "slave ship" analogy is the best and most transparent illustration of his detestible idiocy. People (as self-appointed representative of the black community, HIS people) are facing outrageous tramau, and all he can offer in the way of solution is to point fingers at the government, at culture, and ultimately at white society. When we should be looking at ways to send aid, Jackson's polarizing and alienating by laying blame.
What if "we" is the black community?
You posted on your blog, chuck, an article from someone asking why no one's talking about race in relation to the flood. Here's why: becasue the only way people know how to talk about race issues is the way Jackson does - exploiting the situation for personal gain while only increasing frustration and fragmentation by pointing to differences instead of similarities and pointing the finger rather than offering solutions.
If Jackson wants to do something about it, he should donate several of his millions to the relief effort and go aid the relief effort - not grandstand for the media.
Jackson's an ass clown, but you still launched an ad hominem attack on him instead of answering my question in any depth, although you made it clear you think the answer would be "no." You also implied, rhetorically, that the black community is highly tolerant of its own suffering.
No one is defending Jackson here. Do you have more to say about the STATEMENT other than "no"?
I think the point here is that generally, black leaders would rather use the suffering of blacks to advance their own personal agenda or career than actually work to improve the conditions of their constituents.
In this case, Jackson would rather antagonize those in the best position to help (based on the fact that white people are on average more affluent) than attempt to foster any kind of racial unity to address the problem. What possible effect could his argument have other than making blacks feel more disenfranchised (increasing his personal power) and turning white America off to their plight? So my answer to whether "We have great tolerance for black suffering and black marginalization" is that we (white America) become increasingly less motivated to help fix the problem when Black leaders would rather castigate us for "causing" their problems than attempt any kind of proactive solution. Also, with each outburst, Jackson takes a step closer to turning white empathy off entirely.
Jackson does have every right to be angry though- who knows how many of his illegitimate children were killed in the hurricane?
Nice dodge, jackscolon.
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