You Knew It Was Coming…
…but it doesn’t make it any easier to swallow.
WASHINGTON – Whatever the reasons, residents of heavily Republican Texas seemed to get better treatment from the government during Hurricane Rita than the mostly black, poor and Democratic victims of Katrina in Louisiana. The issue of race is likely to linger in the aftermath of the two big storms.
Government mistakes in the first storm, including failure to provide a means of evacuation for tens of thousands of New Orleans residents stranded in flooding low-lying areas, exposed racial and social fault lines.
These divides may be reinforced, rather than diminished, by the government’s far more robust response to Hurricane Rita.
Texas is the president’s home state, has a Republican governor and is the home of big oil. New Orleans before Katrina was heavily populated by poor blacks who vote Democratic.
I wish I could find the link to the article I was reading this afternoon that headlined with how much wealthier that portion of LA and TX were compared to New Orleans. Buried a couple paragraphs down was a ‘not really wealthier, just better off, because these folks owned cars and boats, etc.’ backpedal. It was pretty disgusting. The folks in New Orleans are already pulling a Cindy Sheehan ‘because of Rita, they’ve already forgotten about us!’, with the implied meaning ‘because all them rich Republican Houston socialites are white‘. As far as homes and new lives and a chance to put food on the table, I’ve got a couple forgotten names for you. Charlie, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne. There’s quite a few folks in Florida who would consider themselves to be well ahead of New Orleans in line. And quite a few county governments still waiting on FEMA payments for services they were supposed to be partially reimbursed for. Stuff had to get hauled away. Those contractors had to get paid when they did it. We’re one of the poorest counties in the state and we’re still waiting. This ain’t Palm Beach, New Orleans, beaches or no beaches. And you ain’t the Queen of France. Get in line.
Humanity...or the Lack Thereof | Mr. Bingley | 
September 26, 2005 11:48 pm
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Amazing.
I swear you can’t win for losing. Of course the response was better. It damn well should have been. If something goes wrong and it is handled badly, the next time the same problem comes around again, lessons learned from the first will be implemented.
But I wonder what has been better with Rita? I mean, it seems like the people did not need the Feds much because, well you know, the State and Local officials did their f’n jobs.
Getting over a million people out of harms way kind of leaves not many left needing to be rescued. Also, it seems that the devastation is on a smaller scale in the sense that interstates and bridges seemed to be intact leading into the area. That made it easier to get supplies in.
Bush might as well get on national TV and tell Democrats and the press to go to hell. You bitched and moaned about me not visiting the area after the last one, so I visit it this time and you bitch and moan that I am hampering rescue efforts. You bitched and moaned about a “slow” Federal response, so we did better this time and you say we only did it because it is a Republican state with rich, white people. Come off it already.
I’m choking on my own rage here.
Yeah, this seems like a Newsweek response. I can’t pull it off the web (they want registration and three bucks for a reprint) but we get it here in the office – John Alter’s front-page article for Sept. 19, 2005: “Poverty, Race, and Katrina: Lessons of a National Shame,” complete with extreme close-up of a crying black child. Not to make anyone choke more. (If it makes you feel better I’ve ruined my own lunch on this one.)
No, that’s okay, but we appreciate your sacrificing yourself for our sakes.