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“Yoga and Kosher food. It took the Bush Administration five days to get a fresh bottle of water into New Orleans, but in San Diego they have Yoga classes and the government is taking into account religious dietary restrictions.”
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“Ask anyone in the street to name five American black actors and they can do it; but ask them to name five British counterparts and they will be stuck. That is not because the talent does not exist, but because we just don’t get that exposure here.”
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“Mauricio Arellano, a Mexican-born resident of Maryland, feels he was discriminated by cops who stopped him for having too many air fresheners on his rearview mirror.”
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“The headline of Malkin’s column on NRO read: “A Time to Discriminate: ‘Profile’ foreign donors? Of course!”"
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
S wrote:
Ooh, I am torn on this whole Katrina vs. San Diego disaster treatment. I admit, I knew that the “help” coverage of the fires in SD would looke like near bliss compared to what happend in NO. However, I also have to take into account that some communities are prepared to take care of eathother, and that white people are known to take care of white people. Black people - not so much; not this generation, anyway. Most of the SD victim support came from the local level - AFTER they, and the world was able to study and learn from Katrina. Remember, these fires had been burning for weeks, and it was obvious that a plan was put in place before it was needed. Not so much with Mr. Nagin in NO. Nagin admitted that he waited too long to prepare for a disaster that had been predicted before & during his office.
Also, I know this sounds harsh, but if either of these disasters would have happened in the neighborhood where I grew up, the “savage” coverage would have been the same as Katrina- and not by choice. Sadly, it would not take the inhumane act of federal negligence for my neighbors to look and act like fools. They love drama: fallin out all over the place cause their kitchen stove caught on fire, over-dramatizing at the funerals of relatives they barely know, etc. Put a camera in the mix and…
It’s hard to say how you would respond after being left for dead for five days after a natural disaster. (not to mention your children and elderly loved ones are in the same position) I think I, too, would have cussed out a few politicians if a camera were in my face. But I certainly wouldn’t be ignorant enough to steal a friggin’ flat screen or WHITE gymshoes! (sorry, no one can blame that footage on the media) We can’t compare the responses of the victims, because SD residents were taken care of immediately, mostly by eachother. They weren’t left for dead, although they did complain that they chould have received more help from their local fire fighters.
We also know that the media is very selective in their coverage, and probably cut out every person of color who exhibited peace and composure in NO. My God, what would happen if we showed black people being civil?(like the calm, cool, and collective residents that I’ve seen in SD)
Now, what happened to the wealthy BLACK people in NO? Did they turn their back on the black community, or did the media just choose not to air such a positive image of us? And what if the SD fires occured in a large trailer park area full of poor whites? Indian reservations? Would they get the same treatment, assistance and coverage as SD’s wealthy whites? There are sooo many angles you could take on this.
Would love to hear other P.O.V.’s
Posted 25 Oct 2007 at 10:01 am ¶
Brian wrote:
“Yoga and Kosher food. It took the Bush Administration five days to get a fresh bottle of water into New Orleans, but in San Diego they have Yoga classes and the government is taking into account religious dietary restrictions.”
Racism is no excuse for sloppy thinking.
There are huge diffs between this event and the New Orleans disaster. Katrina was a disaster for an entire city. The fires in California move slowly enough to allow for evacuation - most people in SoCal own a car and they do not affect the entire city or County. Large parts of San Diego county (news reports implying to the contrary) are unaffected except for the smoke in the air and having to cope with refugees from other parts of the county.
I think the key diff is that people in Southern California deal with fires and other problems like this every year. The scale is impressive but the problem is routine.
And too - SoCal is not lilly white, yoga is color blind.
Posted 25 Oct 2007 at 12:47 pm ¶
squidfly wrote:
You can’t compare a fire in a semi rural community, to a Flash Flood in an inner City, it’s lazy.
Posted 25 Oct 2007 at 5:07 pm ¶
ceej wrote:
While I understand the comparison to Cali Fires and Katrina, those residing outside So. Cal just have to realize we are just better and sometimes over prepared for brush fires and earthquakes here. Yes, the majority of the affected areas are white and affluent, but many of them are not. Plus, our Mayors were willing to call on the state for help, and the state governor was willing to call the feds… ASAP: No egos or dick-measuring contests in Cali. As an African-American Cali native, I just can’t be so quick to call ‘racism’ in this case.
Posted 25 Oct 2007 at 7:58 pm ¶
Colin wrote:
You are correct, racism is not an excuse for sloppy thinking. And NO, SoCal is not lily white and New Orleans was and is not a 100 percent chocolate city. There are and were diverse, if segregated groupings of peoples in each locale.
If we dismiss the supposed connections between both disasters as flawed logic, what then, do you say to the argument at the end of the article: that race, class and assumed political affiliation are the primary criteria for this government’s response to the critical concerns of its citizens and other peoples?
Posted 25 Oct 2007 at 10:46 pm ¶
gatamala wrote:
S~
Black folks did help black folks. Did you not see the footage of people floating relatives or old neighbors on doors? Did you not see people trying to help the sick and the dying? As far as the wealthy blacks, they evacuated, just like the wealthy whites (who left the poor whites in Algiers).
Perhaps folks stole gymshoes, because their other shoes were soggy and filled with wastewater. The TV, hell, considering there’s nowhere to plug it in I suppose it was something of value that could be exchanged for something else.
Posted 26 Oct 2007 at 8:42 am ¶
Brian wrote:
what then, do you say to the argument at the end of the article: that race, class and assumed political affiliation are the primary criteria for this government’s response to the critical concerns of its citizens and other peoples?
I don’t believe that argument is correct.
Posted 26 Oct 2007 at 9:23 am ¶
Ms. Torres wrote:
Okay, I’m surprised nobody else mentioned this, but what’s up with the portrayal of kosher food as a luxury? Yes, if a religious Jew is starving, he or she is rabbinically commanded to eat non-kosher food to save a life — but many devout people will not do so, unless it is truly a last resort.
I think the implications in this article are not so subtle…
Posted 26 Oct 2007 at 12:39 pm ¶
S wrote:
gatamala -
I don’t recall saying they DIDN’T help at all. I said I saw little footage of blacks helping blacks (one shot of a black family pushing an old woman in a boat, and another of a woman assisting another elderly woman @ the dome, MAYBE a few others). That’s why I questioned whether they rarely helped eachother, or whether the media just chose not to air images of blacks being resourceful. Even afterwards, most of the footage of celebrities and mainstream helpers was of white people. They rarely showed the black football players who contributed or even Oprah (she had to air it on her own show). It was a YEAR later on a morning show, that I heard about a group of Asians helping (only) other Asians, and a group of Latinos helping helping whomever they could.
Either way, SD r esidents not 0nly had time to evacuate, but they also had somewhere to evacute TO, and the means to get there. However, they too, thought they could have received more help and saved more homes.
Like I said, there are several angles you could take, many ways to look at this.
Posted 27 Oct 2007 at 6:46 am ¶
S wrote:
Add: Let’s not forget that SD deals with this situation just about every year and have had emergency plans ready. Nagin was said to have had no plan at all. Shouldn’t the help start at the local level? If you know a disaster is highly possible, you can’t fully blame others if you had no plan to help yourself (but you certainly can complain about the timing - hell, we had American helpers way over in Srilanka JUST A DAY after the tsunami).
Nagin HAD to know that there were TONS of people (black or not) that, despite wanting to evacuate, had no means to and no where to go if they did. Were as in SD, I haven’t seen any coverage yet that suggests that any of those people lacked the means to evacuate.
Posted 27 Oct 2007 at 6:55 am ¶