September 05, 2005.
I, like millions of others, spent the past week watching
helplessly as thousands upon thousands of people lost their lives and
livelihoods in the wake of the hurricane called Katrina. As images of the
victims flashed on the screen, I sat in horror watching the entire city of New
Orleans reduced to rubble and its people to refugees. In a matter of hours an
internationally celebrated city became a Third World nation. The US had been
unmasked. No more façade of Americana: shopping malls, clean concrete sidewalks,
name brand neighbourhoods. The mask of materialism had been ripped away by
Katrina’s tidal waves. All that was left was something akin to a nightmare.
Something that looks all too real to too many all over the planet. This is not
something to gloat about. For it reveals something very disturbing about the
United States. Something that many Black activists from Frederick Douglass on
down have noted and named: America is a fraud.
What is a tragedy on top of the tragedy is the response to it
or, better stated, the lack of a response. Natural calamities are bound to
happen. They are to be expected in fact. Certainly, this one was anticipated.
But what is most distressing about this recent tragedy is the way this
government and segments of the population have failed to respond in kind. That
failure is rooted in a racism and classism that is as American as the Atlanta
Braves and all that that team’s name implies. By no means is the racism and
classism a creation of the media as many have tried to imply. ABC, NBC,
CBS and CNN are just reflecting the reality. The United States is
as divided as ever. This assertion is echoed in the haunting cries of the
hording Black masses desperately crying: "HELP US!" Yet no real help would reach
them for days. And rather than hold the responsible parties accountable, the
media decided to criminalise the victims.
There is an email that is making the rounds in the inboxes of
African Americans across this nation. The subject heading says it all: "Black
Looters, White Finders". It exposes the corporate media’s reportage of the
actions of the victims. One picture is a White couple wading through the flood
carrying bread and soda. They "found" food and thus, are seen as innocent,
simply taking care of themselves under desperate circumstances. The other image
which is the predominant image being telecast is that of a Black young man also
wading through the water with a bag of food. The caption under his picture calls
him a "looter". The implication being that he is a criminal, someone who ought
to be arrested and locked up. He is not seen as worthy of saving himself. Any
act on his part and the part of any other Black person doing similarly is viewed
as criminal. That is a crime.
It is asinine that people would be more concerned about
protecting property than protecting people in the wake of this tragedy.
Condemning people for pilfering food that would otherwise spoil or rot says more
about the people casting aspersions than it does about the people struggling to
survive. It speaks to the inhumanity of those that have historically refused to
acknowledge the humanity of Black people.
But the racism doesn’t rest there.
There is also the racism that is not seen on camera. I am
referring to the racism of those that were able to leave, able to escape the
storm. There is the racism of those Whites that by dint of their White privilege
could afford to leave while the African Americans that also lived there were
cuffed to the catastrophe that was coming. These were the very Black people the
Whites had confined to a state of dependency. These were the very Blacks that
swept their floors, emptied their trash, wiped their windows, cooked their food,
cared for their children, taxied them to and fro, and fixed their vehicles. Kept
their livelihoods alive. It was on the backs of those that were left behind that
the Whites rode out to safety. Yet that story will never get told on Nightline.
New Orleans is a majority Black city; has to be to have a Black
mayor. In fact 67 per cent of the city’s residents are African American. The
overwhelming majority of them fall below the poverty line. Blacks in Alabama and
Mississippi where the storm also hit fare no better. What choice did they have
to stay or leave? Leave and go where? Yet, we have had to watch the majority
Black victims of the storm derided by journalists and White reporters for not
evacuating, not "heeding the warning". No! They didn’t choose to remain; they
were left behind. They don’t own SUVs or Subaru Outbacks. They couldn’t rent a
U-Haul or even an Avis car because they don’t carry any credit cards because too
many of them hardly make ten grand a year. So they had no choice but to wade it
out. Cast out the lifeboat, these poor dark-skinned peoples were rejected long
before the high water hit their homeland. There would be no ark for them. No
refuge. No sanctuary from the rains or the racism. Landlocked. They expected to
die in their hometown of N’orlins. They just hoped it would be a death that was
a bit more dignified than this.
One of the prime functions of the American media is to
perpetuate the myth that the US is a democratic, just and upwardly mobile
nation. And that we care for one another equally. All these myths are exposed as
frauds in the wake of this tragedy. And as a consequence, the networks don’t
know how to address themselves to that fact, so they have opted to go with what
has always worked for them: pander to the inherent racism of this society. They
have chosen to stoke the flames of disdain for poor Blacks that harbours in the
heart of this America.
The media is not alone in this either. There is the disingenuous
governor of Louisiana who called on her state to pray the day before the storm
only to turn and sic the National Guard on the Black victims of the storm.
Warning them that these soldiers had just returned from combat and would "shoot
to kill". This outrageous disregard for the lives of the citizens of her state
is not checked at the Louisiana border but goes all the way to the White House.
The response of the Bush administration has been disgraceful. The response has
been no response. He might as well have just stayed on the ranch and twiddled
his thumbs. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, the agency that is
supposed to be first on the scene in situations such as this, has given more
excuses than aid.
When the storm hit, Bush was on vacation. Once again. Just like
he was on 9/11. But Texas is just a state away from Louisiana. Yet the President
decided to fly over the calamity rather than touch down and get a personal
account of the suffering. A healthy human body can survive approximately three
weeks without food but only about three days without water. Yet it would take
Bush four days to even make an appearance. (And still no clean water has yet
been sent in the numbers that are needed.) It would take national and
international pressure to get the leader of the world’s police to protect his
own. But that is just it. Bush doesn’t consider us Black folk his own. Even when
he arrived, he wasn’t seen conferring with the majority of victims who are
Black. No. He went straightaway to the White districts. Got a photo-op kissing a
White girl who was crying about losing her home. Kanye was correct; Bush doesn’t
care about Black people. But that is not news. The issue is, knowing that, what
are we going to do about it? And further, knowing that Bush doesn’t consider us
"his own", what about those who do?
What of the Black bourgeoisie? Where are they in all this? Just
the other night I sat appalled as I listened to National Public Radio (NPR)’s
"negro hour" called "News and Notes", hosted by former BET anchorman Ed Gordon.
He and a round table of well-to-do Blacks traded barbs about how uncivilised
those Blacks were behaving in New Orleans. What are they to do? How would our
fine well spoken Black cohorts want their under-educated counterparts to act in
such a hellish condition? Would they have them walk by a grocery store while
they and their loved ones die of lack of food and clean water? Would that be the
civilised thing to do? The willingness of Black journalists to parrot their
White counterparts is what is appalling. Black folks pilfering food so as to
survive, on the other hand, is quite understandable and, I would dare say,
encouraged.
Atlanta, Black Mecca, sits just two states away from New
Orleans, right next to Alabama and Mississippi, states that were also hit. Some
of the nation’s wealthiest Black people reside and do business there. Where are
they? And let’s not talk about the churches. Those mega churches could easily
take in the thousands that are currently being rejected at the Astrodome and
Superdome. Where are they? Eddie Long and Creflo Dollar no doubt are aware of
the tragedy. Surely they will make reference to the tragedy in their sermons
come Sunday. Somehow I imagine they will blame the poor and make it seem as if
this is God’s doing to correct the sinful ways of The Big Easy. But many of the
suffering are elderly Black women who spent their Sunday mornings preparing for
church, listening to these Black televangelists and their White predecessors
preach on TV, sending them money in hopes of God’s blessings. They have now been
met with the deafening and damning silence of the Black church. These mega
churches and their MegaFests propagate a doctrine that ties faith to material
success. Essentially, if you believe hard enough and tithe right, God will bless
you with excessive amounts of mammon. This theology that damns the poor and
praises the rich has more basis in the Bush administration’s domestic plan than
in the Bible.
Even now the corporate structure is jockeying for position.
Staking their claim on what to them is a grand real estate opportunity. One
person’s tragedy is another’s treasure. Even G. W. himself was quoted talking
about how they’re going to rebuild New Orleans. No mention of rebuilding the
lives of the Black majority of New Orleans that have lost their entire material
existence in the storm. Rather than address them, he spoke fondly of the day
when he will sit on fellow millionaire, fellow Republican and Mississippi
Senator Trent Lott’s new front porch once his 154-year-old oceanfront home is
rebuilt. Even in the face of such tremendous loss of life, Bush can still take
comfort in the certainty of capitalism.
It is that trust in capitalism, that belief that by throwing a
few coins at the problem, that all will be solved. But it will take more than
relief drives and donations to address the problems that are present in this
disaster. These acts, though necessary given the enormity of the loss, are only
bandages on a wound that is diseased. The true test as to whether these relief
efforts will be a success is the quality of life that these people will have in
the months and years to come. Sure, the Red Cross and the Salvation Army will
bolster their revenue and supplies as a result of this tragedy. But the real
question that needs to be raised again and again is: Will all the millions being
raised really reach the people in dire need in a country where many believe that
the poor are incapable of taking care of themselves?
Dr. King in his anti-war speech, "Beyond Vietnam: Time to Break
Silence", said that "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar.
It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."
Disaster relief is not enough when the problem goes deeper than the depth of the
flood waters. What life awaits the impoverished Black victims of Katrina? Did we
hear any of them talk about how they planned to rebuild? No. They have not the
means. We need to come to see that the edifice that produces poverty in this
country needs restructuring and work toward that even as we provide aid to meet
the right-now-needs of the suffering. Otherwise, this is just prep for what will
become a perpetual practice.
The hording masses are the Poor People’s Campaign that King
sought to organise before his assassination to expose the consequences of
America’s wilful neglect of its poorest and most desperate. They are now
refugees in their home. Political refugees in a land that rejected them at
birth. Rendered this status by conditions outside their control. Now wading in
polluted water. Sleeping with rotting corpses. Inhaling the fumes of faeces and
urine in order to survive under the unrelenting humidity of 90 degree heat.
Scared to death. Frustrated to the point of insanity. This has been and remains
the reality of the wretched of this country left to die in this makeshift hell
called America. n
(Source: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=8677).
(Ewuare Osayande (www.osayande.org) is a poet, political
activist and author of several books including the forthcoming Blood Luxury
(Africa World Press). He is an organiser with P.O.W.E.R. (People Organised
Working to Eradicate Racism) based in Philadelphia, PA; [email protected]).