(no subject)

Hoping to hear that the following people are okay:

James Butler (New Orleans east) -- safely in North Carolina
Janice and David Liang (New Orleans east) -- have heard they are okay, not sure about their status
Billy and Melissa Holder and childlings (Chalmette) -- apparently safe in MS
Heidi Bayer-Tompkins (Manhattan Boulevard)
Angelle Arata (uptown)
Jamie Joy Gatto (uptown) -- safely in Houston

Things in my life are actually good at the moment. My appointment at Harvard has been extended through January and may become permanent. And tomorrow evening i leave on a four-day vacation with lady_babalon. My home life and social life and projects and relationships are happy and stable and on the rise.

It is so odd to have these good things juxtaposed with the absolute terror of the situation in New Orleans, and survivor's guilt (there's a lot of that floating around in the household right now). Of not knowing whether all of my friends and acquaintances made it through okay.

I'm particularly annoyed by prejudicial coverage in the news. Not just the "black people 'loot,' white people 'find'" dichotomy much commented on, but this sensationalism about looters ganging up outside Children's Hospital and trying to break in. There's no indication that anyone knows why people were really there outside the hospital, but i can imagine "legitimate" reasons they would be there -- they may well have been people seeking shelter, food, necessary medicine, information on family members. Maybe they weren't. But it underscores the idea i wrote about recently of "drug addicts" as people so subhumanly degenerate they will OMG attack a children's hospital. So there's a news story and suddenly i'm reading vicious comments that people hope others will "off one another" or be taken out by SWAT teams or just die. And i'm convinced that there is a deeply racist core at the heart of all this sentiment.

the palestinians of the united states

My prediction is that there will be strong pressure to form a system of gulags to contain the New Orleans refugees, and that NOLA refugees will be treated differently from Biloxi refugees. I won't predict that this will actually happen, i just see a lot of potential for it.

This is one of those times where i really hope i'm wrong.

At present, with the United States in disaster relief mentality, people all over the country are happy to extend invitations to the NOLA evacuees to stay in their shelters and put their children in their school systems.

Before long, though, a perception will form that the NOLA refugees are "ungrateful." They will complain about living in huge dormitories with no privacy and no dignity, wiith no long-term prospects. Some will act from despair and desperation, using the survival skills they learned in New Orleans.

It doesn't matter that this will be a small fraction; NOLA refugees as a class will be indicted in public opinion. Politicians will speak out against the forming prejudice, calling for calm and compassion.

Did i mention that the majority of NOLA residents, and therefore most of the refugees, are black?

Even though it's 2005, it won't be long before many people in the south look around and decide that their city council members have invited a bunch of "unemployed blacks" to live in their arenas and high school gymnasiums... people who "will bring crime, drugs, and guns to their neighborhoods".

What i foresee happening then is talk of tightening restrictions on NOLA refugees still living in camps at that point. They could find themselves required to stay put until they can prove that they have a job or family on the outside. They will be like immigrants trying to establish citizenship in their own country.

In case this sounds outlandish, consider that three years ago New Orleans politicians were seriously discussing the idea of a tent city to house the city's homeless, a place where they could be fed, housed, clothed, and, oh yes, medicated; a place which they would find it difficult to leave. This idea is already floating around in memespace.