What does the future hold for race relations in America?

I can understand a extremely negative view towards the government in this terrible situation that is unfolding, concerning all the victims being "left behind" in the streets for days & days.

What would be wrong is to direct this failure to respond more quickly (by the Federal government) and place the blame on the opposite race or whatever. Blacks & whites (American people) are coming together as one and pouring out more love & support than we have seen in a long time. Sure Americans rally in time of crisis, but we need to embrace the fact that we truly are one...........

I truly believe that it must be such mixed emotions for the the victims, being treated like animals for days on the streets of New Orleans. Suffering through it with patience to get to your next destination. Then (hopefully) going into shelters and experiencing the other extreme with an outpouring of generosity.

I don't know... We need racial reconciliation at this time.

 

Seriously guys, you are all missing the point...

Race was not a factor here, that's not what our society is about anymore, although there are still a few of the segregationist generation around.

America is about class, as in 'classism', as in a class-based society.

The fact that most of the NOLA people stranded in that town were Black has little to do with the overall point, since they just happened to be Black. Their real crime was being 'poor', as in what many like to call the 'welfare class'. In case you haven't noticed, there are millions of poor Whites in and all around this country, and believe me they are not treated much better at all, nor are millions of poor Hispanics.

What do we all say when we talk about our society? We always use class and terms such as 'middle-class' or 'lower-class' or 'welfare class'. Take myself for example: I am a Muslim-American, living in largely Jewish AND Black upper-middle class neighborhood. My immediate neighbors are a Haitian family, an African-American family, a Chinese-American physician, Portuguese-Americans, and more than a few Jewish-Americans. Now this is clearly a diverse neighborhood, but we all have one thing in common: we belong to the same 'class'.

Don't you think the government response would have been much more 'appropriate' if NOLA was a black-majority city of middle-class people?

I think that most Americans tend to confuse 'racism' with 'classism', just because it so happens that the bulk of 'poor people' are in fact minorities, more so Black than any other ethnic group. But no, that's not the case, it's not racism, and if anything ever happens in Houston or Los Angeles (two large metropolitan areas with large minority populations, many of whom belong to the middle-class) you can bet that the people here would get much more 'attention' from the authorities, because they are more vital to the economic health of this country.

It's classism, not racism.

 

Unfortunately, the average American won't understand that, which is tragic. Its easier to just point fingers and blame it on race.

 

But if it wasn't for our Country's racist history, would the NO poor not be mostly black? It is what it is.

 

Understand...

But that's what capitalism is, that's what it creates: classes.

 

I dont think there is any doubt that what we are seeing is a Class issue in NO.

If you had the money to leave, get a hotel outside of the area, maybe stay with family or friends outside of NO...you did it.

Many people didnt have that luxury. I dont think its a case of saying "Poor" people either.

Lets face it, there are many people who would be called "Middle class" that would have decided to stay because the price to leave COULD have been to high. As it turned out, the price of staying was even higher.

I agree that this is a real test of race relations in the U.S. though. I think its up to leaders in communities such as Houtson that are helping out those displaced to step up and show America that in times of need AMERICANS pull togeather no matter what their skin colour is.

 

Racism is the tool of the Classist

Keep the poor of each race looking at each other and
those various issues rather than the overall
explotation by the upper class . . . perhaps?

Rocket River

 

it also shows the incredible amount of racism that still exists in the South...

segregation still exists, new orleans is proof


how will White America respond is a good question...

RR- good point, this is more about Classism, it just is unfortunate that most poor people(stuck in N.O) happen to be African-American...



its an endless, vicious cycle

 

Well, it's more inclusive than that...'ignorance' is the tool of the classist, which encompasses racism and many other things. They depend on an ignorant public that can be easily misled and indoctrined to accept the 'elitest' system. They know what makes the masses 'tick' and endlessly exploit that.

 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090305Y.shtml


The Two Americas

By Marjorie Cohn
Saturday 03 September 2005

Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died.

What is Cuban President Fidel Castro's secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin America, "the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go."

"Cuba's leaders go on TV and take charge," said Valdes. Contrast this with George W. Bush's reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The day after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Bush was playing golf. He waited three days to make a TV appearance and five days before visiting the disaster site. In a scathing editorial on Thursday, the New York Times said, "nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis."

"Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable" in Cuba, Valdes said. "Shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They have family doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the neighborhood, and already know, for example, who needs insulin."

They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and refrigerators, "so that people aren't reluctant to leave because people might steal their stuff," Valdes observed.

After Hurricane Ivan, the United Nations International Secretariat for Disaster Reduction cited Cuba as a model for hurricane preparation. ISDR director Salvano Briceno said, "The Cuban way could easily be applied to other countries with similar economic conditions and even in countries with greater resources that do not manage to protect their population as well as Cuba does."

Our federal and local governments had more than ample warning that hurricanes, which are growing in intensity thanks to global warming, could destroy New Orleans. Yet, instead of heeding those warnings, Bush set about to prevent states from controlling global warming, weaken FEMA, and cut the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for levee construction in New Orleans by $71.2 million, a 44 percent reduction.

Bush sent nearly half our National Guard troops and high-water Humvees to fight in an unnecessary war in Iraq. Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Paris in New Orleans, noted a year ago, "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq."

An Editor and Publisher article Wednesday said the Army Corps of Engineers "never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was the reason for the strain," which caused a slowdown of work on flood control and sinking levees.

"This storm was much greater than protection we were authorized to provide," said Alfred C. Naomi, a senior project manager in the New Orleans district of the corps.

Unlike in Cuba, where homeland security means keeping the country secure from deadly natural disasters as well as foreign invasions, Bush has failed to keep our people safe. "On a fundamental level," Paul Krugman wrote in yesterday's New York Times, "our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on prevention measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice."

During the 2004 election campaign, vice presidential candidate John Edwards spoke of "the two Americas." It seems unfathomable how people can shoot at rescue workers. Yet, after the beating of Rodney King aired on televisions across the country, poor, desperate, hungry people in Watts took over their neighborhoods, burning and looting. Their anger, which had seethed below the surface for so long, erupted. That's what's happening now in New Orleans. And we, mostly white, people of privilege, rarely catch a glimpse of this other America.

"I think a lot of it has to do with race and class," said Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. "The people affected were largely poor people. Poor, black people."

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin reached a breaking point Thursday night. "You mean to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands of people that have died and thousands more that are dying every day, that we can't figure out a way to authorize the resources we need? Come on, man!"

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had boasted earlier in the day that FEMA and other federal agencies have done a "magnificent job" under the circumstances.

But, said, Nagin, "They're feeding the people a line of bull, and they are spinning and people are dying. Get off your asses and let's do something!"

When asked about the looting, the mayor said that except for a few "knuckleheads," it is the result of desperate people trying to find food and water to survive.

Nagin blamed the outbreak of violence and crime on drug addicts who have been cut off from their drug supplies, wandering the city, "looking to take the edge off their jones."

When Hurricane Ivan hit Cuba, no curfew was imposed; yet, no looting or violence took place. Everyone was in the same boat.

Fidel Castro, who has compared his government's preparations for Hurricane Ivan to the island's long-standing preparations for an invasion by the United States, said, "We've been preparing for this for 45 years."

On Thursday, Cuba's National Assembly sent a message of solidarity to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. It says the Cuban people have followed closely the news of the hurricane damage in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and the news has caused pain and sadness. The message notes that the hardest hit are African-Americans, Latino workers, and the poor, who still wait to be rescued and taken to secure places, and who have suffered the most fatalities and homelessness. The message concludes by saying that the entire world must feel this tragedy as its own.

 

i have hope it will improve with each passing generation.

 

I agree. They've divided the American poor pretty well into what the talking heads call Red States....

During abolition periods, slave owners were in the minority, and among them very few owned plantations of scale. Yet the majority of the poor whites still bought into slavery because it held the opportunity for them to one day make it rich.

Fast forward to the immigration exodus when national percentages are just as high/higher as the "Mexican swarm" today. When poor Italian and black workers were vying for higher wages, the factory owners decided to wedge their solidarity by giving the Italian workers more benefits and the implicit knowledge that future generations would rise up white.

The whole classism/racism issue is that implicit knowledge among the poor. It's about who gets theirs with the unconscious understanding that not every poor schmoe will get theirs. It might also serve to help some poor bastards comfort themselves that they're supposedly better than others without really doing much to improve their position.

 

What most of you are not acknowledging is that yes, it is a class situation, but MOST of the poor black families have been poor since the civil right era. Since MLK was murdered in the 60s, that was only 40 years ago. So the elder people in NOLA lived themselves in an oppressive society.

99% of the poor people in NOLA are poor because of racism. Make no mistake.

Today, some blacks are starting to pull themselves out poverty but this stuff takes time. So when poor blacks are bitter, for many blatent racism is still fresh.

Rather than giving these folks a pair of jeans and a can of beans, America needs to give them hope. We need to build legitimate programs that can help these people pull themselves up out of poverty. Many have been poor for so long, they don't know how and will fall back to old habbits. It will take a generation of concerted efforts to be effective. Unfortunately, America's attention span isn't that long. So I don't have my hopes up. Helping these folks in a broad way won't happen in my lifetime.

 

We need to understand what Racism is. Racism is only rarely going to exist in completely overt situations today. That doesn't mean that racism doesn't exist in other ways and forms.

There will be few lynchings, and few people who won't allow minorities into restaurants etc.

The problem is racism usually takes more subtle forms. Those forms are what sometimes cause people to get mad when anyone cries racism.

Racism exists when a person moves to the other side of the street because they get a feeling of being unsafe at approaching black people.

Sometimes when people look at people of a race they they say to themselves that person is probably a blue collar worker, on welfare, or whatever. By mentally ruling that person out of jobs as CFO's or bankers, or professors, or a bigwig in finance racism has manifested itself.

Racism exists if a black family moved next door to a white family and the white family automatically worried about loud parties, crime, out of control children and noise, etc.

These types of racism exist very much in today's society. It isn't a legislated racism like in the past that nearly everyone can see, and would be horrified at. The hypotheticals I described exist and many people don't even realize it is racism. It is harder to prove this kind of racism, and complaints about it often bring up an angry reaction from some people who feel that there is too much complaining and playing of the race card.

Sometimes there is too much complaining and too much playing of the race card, but just because somebody wasn't lynched, denied entry or service at a public facility doesn't mean racism doesn't exist.

It will only very rarely be so huge and out in the open like it was up until the 60's but it still exists and is widespread.

 

true
Look at Rodney King
many folx beleive that the cops
would have reacted the same and still got off
if Rodney king were white

that simply is not true


Look at OJ
People wonder why black folx were so happy
because we found the KEY
BE FRICKING RICH
that is the KEY to equality . . . .
let me explain
If he were poor . .and black . . he'd have a needle in his arm
Remember less than 70 yrs go
Black men got killed for 'reckless eyeballing'
that means looking at a white woman

I mean a kid was killed for whistling at a white woman
those were the times

When you see these old Klans men on trial
it is not treated with NEAR the hoopla as the
old Nazis on trial . . .
Cause unfortunately. . . alot of americans
don't see a crazy killer
but they see Grandpa. .. . or someone like him

I hate to beleive this but . . ..
What in American history says that Black folx should
trust this country?
over 300 yrs of slavery?
nearly a 100 yrs of Jim Crowe?
most white Americans feel blamed for what their grandparents did
but
most black folx are living the reality of what your grandparents did

Prosperity is not something that happens overnight
or even over a generation . . it *is* a mentality
people goto psychologist for decades to get over
grandpa beating them and touching them inappropriately
Imagine if for over generations
beatings and inappropriate behavior was accepted behavior and
infact encouraged to increase your property
What if you familiar ties meant NOTHING
your brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers ripped
from you .. . you learn to adapt. .you learn to expected

I'm not saying black folx have mental problems
[which i know some of you will say that is what I am saying]
What I am saying is the mentality
the 'culture of povery' is real IMO

Poor people teach their kids how to remain poor
bad habits. . . .
Schools DO NOT teach any kids the GOOD habits
of money management and various life skills

I don't think it is by accident that various things are removed from schools
I'm not going to say prayer
but
Discipline is lacking - this is a trait of poor folx
Money Management classes - see above
remember HOME EC . . what happened to that ?

Schools now teach you how to remain poor
how to get low level jobs.
College moves you to a higher level
but
As in Rich man Poor dad
The Poor dad was a PHD . . with poor money management skillz

These are the things that need to be implemented
to squish racism
EQUALITY OF EDUCATION . . . not just the 3 R's

I could go on . . but this is gettting too long i think

Rocket River

 

This is a great article about New Orleans and its African American inhabitants posted in the New York Times by Anne Rice.



http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/o...&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print



Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans?

By ANNE RICE

La Jolla, Calif.

WHAT do people really know about New Orleans?

Do they take away with them an awareness that it has always been not only a great white metropolis but also a great black city, a city where African-Americans have come together again and again to form the strongest African-American culture in the land?

The first literary magazine ever published in Louisiana was the work of black men, French-speaking poets and writers who brought together their work in three issues of a little book called L'Album Littéraire. That was in the 1840's, and by that time the city had a prosperous class of free black artisans, sculptors, businessmen, property owners, skilled laborers in all fields. Thousands of slaves lived on their own in the city, too, making a living at various jobs, and sending home a few dollars to their owners in the country at the end of the month.

This is not to diminish the horror of the slave market in the middle of the famous St. Louis Hotel, or the injustice of the slave labor on plantations from one end of the state to the other. It is merely to say that it was never all "have or have not" in this strange and beautiful city.

Later in the 19th century, as the Irish immigrants poured in by the thousands, filling the holds of ships that had emptied their cargoes of cotton in Liverpool, and as the German and Italian immigrants soon followed, a vital and complex culture emerged. Huge churches went up to serve the great faith of the city's European-born Catholics; convents and schools and orphanages were built for the newly arrived and the struggling; the city expanded in all directions with new neighborhoods of large, graceful houses, or areas of more humble cottages, even the smallest of which, with their floor-length shutters and deep-pitched roofs, possessed an undeniable Caribbean charm.

Through this all, black culture never declined in Louisiana. In fact, New Orleans became home to blacks in a way, perhaps, that few other American cities have ever been. Dillard University and Xavier University became two of the most outstanding black colleges in America; and once the battles of desegregation had been won, black New Orleanians entered all levels of life, building a visible middle class that is absent in far too many Western and Northern American cities to this day.

The influence of blacks on the music of the city and the nation is too immense and too well known to be described. It was black musicians coming down to New Orleans for work who nicknamed the city "the Big Easy" because it was a place where they could always find a job. But it's not fair to the nature of New Orleans to think of jazz and the blues as the poor man's music, or the music of the oppressed.

Something else was going on in New Orleans. The living was good there. The clock ticked more slowly; people laughed more easily; people kissed; people loved; there was joy.

Which is why so many New Orleanians, black and white, never went north. They didn't want to leave a place where they felt at home in neighborhoods that dated back centuries; they didn't want to leave families whose rounds of weddings, births and funerals had become the fabric of their lives. They didn't want to leave a city where tolerance had always been able to outweigh prejudice, where patience had always been able to outweigh rage. They didn't want to leave a place that was theirs.

And so New Orleans prospered, slowly, unevenly, but surely - home to Protestants and Catholics, including the Irish parading through the old neighborhood on St. Patrick's Day as they hand out cabbages and potatoes and onions to the eager crowds; including the Italians, with their lavish St. Joseph's altars spread out with cakes and cookies in homes and restaurants and churches every March; including the uptown traditionalists who seek to preserve the peace and beauty of the Garden District; including the Germans with their clubs and traditions; including the black population playing an ever increasing role in the city's civic affairs.

Now nature has done what the Civil War couldn't do. Nature has done what the labor riots of the 1920's couldn't do. Nature had done what "modern life" with its relentless pursuit of efficiency couldn't do. It has done what racism couldn't do, and what segregation couldn't do either. Nature has laid the city waste - with a scope that brings to mind the end of Pompeii.

•

I share this history for a reason - and to answer questions that have arisen these last few days. Almost as soon as the cameras began panning over the rooftops, and the helicopters began chopping free those trapped in their attics, a chorus of voices rose. "Why didn't they leave?" people asked both on and off camera. "Why did they stay there when they knew a storm was coming?" One reporter even asked me, "Why do people live in such a place?"

Then as conditions became unbearable, the looters took to the streets. Windows were smashed, jewelry snatched, stores broken open, water and food and televisions carried out by fierce and uninhibited crowds.

Now the voices grew even louder. How could these thieves loot and pillage in a time of such crisis? How could people shoot one another? Because the faces of those drowning and the faces of those looting were largely black faces, race came into the picture. What kind of people are these, the people of New Orleans, who stay in a city about to be flooded, and then turn on one another?

Well, here's an answer. Thousands didn't leave New Orleans because they couldn't leave. They didn't have the money. They didn't have the vehicles. They didn't have any place to go. They are the poor, black and white, who dwell in any city in great numbers; and they did what they felt they could do - they huddled together in the strongest houses they could find. There was no way to up and leave and check into the nearest Ramada Inn.

What's more, thousands more who could have left stayed behind to help others. They went out in the helicopters and pulled the survivors off rooftops; they went through the flooded streets in their boats trying to gather those they could find. Meanwhile, city officials tried desperately to alleviate the worsening conditions in the Superdome, while makeshift shelters and hotels and hospitals struggled.

And where was everyone else during all this? Oh, help is coming, New Orleans was told. We are a rich country. Congress is acting. Someone will come to stop the looting and care for the refugees.

And it's true: eventually, help did come. But how many times did Gov. Kathleen Blanco have to say that the situation was desperate? How many times did Mayor Ray Nagin have to call for aid? Why did America ask a city cherished by millions and excoriated by some, but ignored by no one, to fight for its own life for so long? That's my question.

I know that New Orleans will win its fight in the end. I was born in the city and lived there for many years. It shaped who and what I am. Never have I experienced a place where people knew more about love, about family, about loyalty and about getting along than the people of New Orleans. It is perhaps their very gentleness that gives them their endurance.

They will rebuild as they have after storms of the past; and they will stay in New Orleans because it is where they have always lived, where their mothers and their fathers lived, where their churches were built by their ancestors, where their family graves carry names that go back 200 years. They will stay in New Orleans where they can enjoy a sweetness of family life that other communities lost long ago.

But to my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us "Sin City," and turned your backs.

Well, we are a lot more than all that. And though we may seem the most exotic, the most atmospheric and, at times, the most downtrodden part of this land, we are still part of it. We are Americans. We are you.