(no subject)

[sophiaserpentia]

The floodwaters are making them come out from all over, seeking high ground: the bigots, finding new zeal in their victim-blaming. What's scary is how blatant they are being, not even trying to disguise their hatred. It's as if they sense now is the time to finally take off the mask and reveal themselves in all their ugly, racist glory.

You've all heard, of course, this comment by Rep. Richard Baker (of Baton Rouge): "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." The "looting vs. finding" thing is old news, too.

pamscoffee reports that an official at Greenville Technical College in South Carolina lost her job after twice referring to Katrina evacuees as "yard apes." As in, "sending yellow buses to pick up the yard apes."

Amanda Marcotte's timeline of victim-blaming on AlterNet shows how right-wingers, hoping to deflect criticism of Bush, finally settled in on blaming the welfare state.

This isn't about the President leaving the citizenry of a major American city to die in a hurricane! No, this is a story of black people obtaining expensive goods that the teller of the story deems them unworthy of owning.

George Will is touting the line that the tragedy of Katrina could have been prevented by people marrying and having children the way he tells them to. How it is that married couples in the Superdome could have gotten water, food and evacuation vehicles there faster need not be explained. Laying the blame for Katrina on the shoulders of the mythological Welfare Queen and other Republican bogeymen looks like it's shaping up to be the primary distraction from laying the blame at the feet of those in the federal government who actually had power to help but didn't. The important thing is getting everyone in a tizzy over those awful hurricane victims who dare to believe that they deserve rescue just because they need it.

A frightening and insidious manifestation of this memetic rot was pointed out by lady_babalon: An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State

There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit—but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals—and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep—on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.

Comments

[liminalia.livejournal.com]

Once again, the stories of people banding together to help each other--as reported by Alobar, as reported by Mary Beth Slonsky, and the other interviewees on This American Life, are just not sexy enough for FAUX News and the other mainstream media. I heard stories of gangbangers banding together to "find" juice for dehydrated babies, of them standing guard over the grandmas and helping them out of their flooded homes, of them organizing, sharing resources and protecting other evacuees on overpasses and refusing to be airlifted out until everyone else had been taken. Of a tough 9th Warder rowing his boat with a 2x4 and making repeated trips to rescue people over 24 hours despite being offered a space on motorboats.

Nope, black man as murdering, thieving rapist is just too imprinted in wealthy white America's psyche. It's what they expect to hear, so that's what the media gives 'em.

[delascabezas.livejournal.com]

[nefri.livejournal.com]

fascinating, as always

[pretzelsalt.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

I think that people are showing a lot of their (not-so-hidden) biases by what they report and pass on in Katrina. If they expect that blacks are shiftless, welfare seekers... that's what they'll find. If they expect that people will band together at a time of crisis... that's what they'll find.

People will all do different things during a crisis.

[sammhain.livejournal.com]

We had a Shriner's convention in town last weekend, one of the wives brought an email down for me to photocopy so she could hand it out. She told it made the most sense of anything she'd heard about Katrina. It was the piece about how his was all the fault of the welfare state. I wish I had read it prior to giving it to her.

The funy thing is she told me to keep a copy as though I would undoubtedly agree. I wish Icould have told her my mother raised me on welfare. I wish I could have ased her if she felt corporate welfare was at least as damagging. I't's amazing to me sometimes, what people will allow themselves to believe.

[riverheart.livejournal.com]

an official at Greenville Technical College in South Carolina lost her job

And about time, too.

[kumbunny.livejournal.com]

Australia's "Media Watch" did a storyon the finding versus looting story. With detailed responses from both photographers that also wrote the captions.

I could understand those stories being a sign of media racism if they had been written by the same people. But they weren't.

In one response the photographer himself was almost suffering a nervous breakdown due to the response the image was getting in the media. Informing Media Watch that he had lost his home, his life and family members and was at no stage in his life to be rationalizing one word in his entire career.

I found that a convincing argument.