Barbara Antoinette?

What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivleged anyway, so this is working very well for them." Barbara Bush, Public Radio program "Marketplace" Sept 5, 2005

Yeah, Babs, I'm sure it's just rosy for these "underpriveledged." Homes destroyed, bodies to identify, funerals to arrange and attend, you know, it's really nice for them to sleep on a cot in the astrodome.

I know it's difficult to relate to people who never enter into your social circle, but at least pretend you do. Pretend that you have compassion for your fellow human beings. Don't say you're afraid they may move to your state. Here where I live, all the good people I know are working to help people resettle here, we're not afraid of them. It isn't scary to us.

All I am asking from you plutocrats is this-

Just pretend to care about the rest of us, pretend to speak to us as your equals. Pretend we are more than just huddled masses in your eyes. Pretend, if only for a moment while the cameras are rolling, that you can see yourself in our place, "but for the grace of God..." and all that.

Racism and propaganda

Recently we at jcreadsthenews were able to conduct an experiment. DP (also known as Delicious Pandemonium) is a very left-wing reader and volunteered for our experiment. First, we removed her from her normal media environment, then took her journal entries from her return.

DP's normal media environment consists of Democracy Now! and Air America on the radio, various internet sources for news. (NO TV!)

To Remove DP from her media coccoon, we sent her to Switzerland for 2 weeks in the alps. Upon her return, we stole her journal. Here is an account of her re-entry into American culture.

Because I was out of the country when Hurricane Katrina hit I was
removed from the initial fervor of the first five days. I saw the images on TV,
but I had just seen tons of coverage of the floods in Switzerland. It was
just another flood. It seemed pretty bad, but I was far away and it was just
another one of the bad American activities.

In the Atlanta airport I waited for my plane facing the large windows
to observe the tarmac and sunlight. I tried to read but there was too much
hub bub. I heard a man from the Black Caucus saying the lack of response to
Hurricane Katrina's demolition was a race issue. Oh boy, back in the US
of A, I thought and nearly rolled my eyes. I doubted that race had any
bearing on natural disaster. Though I'm a bleeding heart lefty I thought this
was far fetched and that waving the finger around and screaming Racism was
inappropriate. Apparently in the Atlanta airport I had yet to fully
understand the situation.
You see how the mind works here, the subject was not "understanding" the
situation correctly at that time. Later, after successful re-entry into
her media sphere, she has this experience:
I made the mistake of falling asleep at 6:30PM, after returning home
from my temp. receptionist job. Upon awakening, I realized what has
happened in New Orleans. I woke up thinking of the images I saw and
that no onewith helicopters or boats came to these people's rescue
over all those days. I woke up with this dawning on me and I grew
horrified. Were all those people left to die because of the color of
their skin? It's too horrible. The external influence of news reminded
me to blame Bush, but inside I don't. There are chains of command all
over this country. There is a police force in Tennessee, Kentucky, etc.
and I know there are people in these chains who have a conscience.
Where were all the people with the power to say: send rescue teams,
send food, send water... are they all under the influence
of their chains? Maybe their helicopters don't fly that far.
Here the subject actually recognizes the "external" influence of her media
environment, and feels pressure from it to "blame Bush."   Notice also the
subject's cognitive dissonance- DP is being told it's racism, but finds it
difficult to believe.  You can feel this tension in the entry- logically, DP
reasons, there were people all over who had the ability to help, did they just
stay home?  Is DP able to find any mention of anybody helping these hurricane
victims in her normal, everyday media environment?

Not without actively pursuing the question- difficult to do in an airport, or
while working at an ass-flattening, soul-sucking job.

I believe most Americans will take the news as it is fed to them.  Meaning, they
will believe that people died because of racist policy, or if they get their news
from the other end of the radio, that Hurricane Katrina was a just punishment from
a righteous G-d who heard there was going to be a gay pride event the following
week in New Orleans.  Or whatever their favorite "news" source tells them to
think.

Poverty and racisim

Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi. Almost all the people who live there, be they black or white, are terribly poor. Poverty is America's great divide, not race, not religion. It's poverty.

I've been down that way, in Mississippi and Louisiana, and I know that what I think of as my lowest point financially would be a step up for many of the people there.

I know a little bit about living in poverty, not having a car, getting up an hour early to ride the bus to work, picking which bills to pay each month, turning off the AC in July because the electric bill was unpayable. I know how hopeless it feels, how you can never seem to get ahead.

I know that the life of a person doing temp jobs or day-labor, even call center and office work is just a new formulation of a very old social situation. Serfs, peones, temps, day laborers, customer service representatives, indentured servants, what is the difference?

But wait, modern laborers are "free." Free how? Free to walk away, but also not free, bound by social pressure, by morality and practicality. Workers today are free to quit their jobs whenever they want, if they don't mind being evicted from their homes, harassed by collection agents, (who are themselves caught in the same predicament) and put through the often humiliating process of finding work.

How are poor Americans kept in this perpetual state of servitude? Surely they could work together and demand some simple social supports, unions and social democratic parties in Europe have stood up for workers and made life more bearable for those citizens who aren't highly educated, wealth-generating, top-ten-percenters. Why not here? Because here in America, we have several different colors of poor people, and they all hate each other.

That's why we hear Kanye West saying "George Bush doesn't care about black people." It's just not true, George Bush probably cares quite a bit about Condoleeza Rice, and maybe even cares a little bit about Colin Powell, and I'm pretty sure they qualify as "black people."

It wasn't racism that screwed up the evacuation of New Orleans, it was the inability of the ruling classes to understand the situation. They were simply unable to imagine people who didn't own cars. They gave the order to evacuate, (again) and didn't understand that thousands of people who wanted to leave simply couldn't.

In America, we have reached a day where a man no longer judged by the color of his skin, but rather, by the content of his bank account.