Posted by KaraS on September 26, 2005, at 14:42:35
In reply to Re: Poll - 52% think Katrina relief not handled we, posted by gromit on September 18, 2005, at 1:27:04
> > If some of you here don't believe that the slow response in New Orleans didn't have to do with skin color, then would you agree that it had anything to do with class and status?
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> My first reaction when this happened was these are poor people, not necessarily black people. You can be black, red, or even green and have clout if you are successful. If you're dirt poor it doesn't matter what color your skin is.
>
> The areas of Mississippi and Alabama (stirring the pot, solid red states) that were hit hard were no wealthier or less black though and there hasn't been any uproar about those places. Even other parts of Louisiana haven't had this sort of trouble. I think it's something else but have no idea exactly what. It's not that I don't believe racism exists it's just that there seems to be this push to find it where it doesn't really exist. Geez, how many negatives was that?
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> > I do agree that a lot of the problem was bureaucracy and a lack of leadership but still I can't imagine rich Republican campaign contributors ever being locked down in a Superdome for days without food, water or sanitation. They'd be on their cell phones with their political connections and their lawyers and things would have started to change quickly.
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> Absolutely. There would have been more of a response, but maybe you would just have the three stooges there days earlier.
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> > If those type of people were involved here then Bush would have cancelled his fund raising meetings in San Diego and flown in to New Orleans immediately and personally gotten involved in getting them out of there.
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> Arggghhh. If you *knew* somebody was going to come up to you and punch you in the face what would you do? Would you go about your business or would you start thinking about what you could do? After you've done nothing and gotten decked do you wait a day or so to start thinking what to do about it?
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> I can't believe the title of the original post, 48% think it was handled well? I wonder what percentage of them rely on Fox (Faux) News are their primary new source? What would that percentage be in the New Orleans area?
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> Oh well, I've read that 20% of Americans polled believe the sun revolves around the earth.
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>
> Rick
I'm not certain racism wasn't a factor but I'm not certain that it definitely was either. Just a nagging feeling about it but I think that class level and poverty are definitely involved.I only partially agree that if the population involved were wealthy white people who included some major contributors to Bush or the Republican party that we would have seen the Three Stooges there 3 days earlier. I think we would still have seen plenty of disorganization but I also think that we wouldn't have seen some of the bureaucratic hold-ups of supplies that we saw this time. I believe that the high level connections would have gotten personally involved earlier to move those supplies in and break through the bureaucracy. These poor people in New Orleans had no powerful advocates on the outside working on their behalf.
After I started this thread I realized that not necessarily 48% of the people polled were approving the way things were handled because a sizeable percentage could have had no opinion. Still, it's not a very good commentary on the results.
20% of Americans thinking that the sun revolves around the earth is very scary. It's even scarier that many of them vote.
poster:KaraS
thread:553914
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20050924/msgs/559838.html