Africa says slow Bush response to Hurricane Katrina was 'racist'

[sabra]

http://www.africasia.com/services/news/newsitem.php?area=africa&item=050906133815.8aeatctl.php

Africa says slow Bush response to Hurricane Katrina was 'racist'

Africa has slammed the Bush administration's slow response to the disaster wrought by Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans, a poor and mainly black area, saying it revealed the "racist" character of American society.

"Washington, in a bizarre display of uncaring aloofness in their hour of need, appeared unable to respond to the crisis until days later," the Johannesburg-based The Star newspaper said in an editorial Tuesday.

"The disaster also revealed the racial fissures in American society. Most of the hapless survivors who filled New Orlean's Superdome were black, with the more affluent white residents able to flee in their SUVs (sports utility vehicles) before Katrina brought her misery," it added.

...

"The fact that New Orleans is a southern town predominantly populated by African-Americans... explains why President George W. Bush did not see the need to cut short his holiday... being in America does not make a black man an American," Zimbabwe's state-run Herald daily wrote.

[goclark]

1. Speak to the world Africa about what is happening to our people

Interesting how people canunderstand in other countries what the score is with Bush.

Why can't the rethugs see even a tiny piece of it?

I know why, it's because leadership starts at the TOP and , "George Bush doesn't care about Black people" - Kanye West.

[AspenRose]

13. Willful ignorance

That's why republicans can't see it...because they choose not to.

[iconoclastic cat]

2. Yep.

[BlueEyedSon]

3. Is that the "country of Africa"...?

:rofl:

[psychopomp]

9. Yeah, I caught that, too

There is a tremendous variety of nations on the continent; seems a strange editorial decision to me.

[peacetalksforall]

4. I hope those who spoke from Africa did not include Pat Robertsons

partners in the theft of various countries gold and minerals - right out from under the feet of their poor people.

There is hypocrisy on every continent. But, thanks to those who spoke out from Africa to tell it like it is here, if they said it with sincerity and no partnerships with bigots.

[defiant1]

5. Yikes....

That last quote is a doozy.

[wakeme2008]

6. Read about how good it is IF you live in a Ms town 89% WHITE

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2066886

[beetbox]

7. Haiti- Bangladesh- Kinshasha- Falluja- New Orleans

Now, try this passage: "The evacuation of New Orleans in the face of hurricane... looked sinisterly like Strom Thurmond's version of the Rapture. Affluent white people fled the Big Easy in their SUVs, while the old and car-less -- mainly Black -- were left behind in their below-sea-level shotgun shacks and aging tenements to face the watery wrath." Admittedly a vivid description, but certainly commonplace enough at the moment -- except that it, too, was written back in September 2004 by Mike Davis, also for Tomdispatch, and prophetically labeled, "Poor, Black, and Left Behind." It, too, concerned not Katrina's but Ivan's approach to New Orleans. So there we are. It was possible to know then the fundaments of just about everything that's happened now -- and not just from Tomdispatch either.

In the last week, we've seen many of the black poor of New Orleans not only left behind in a new Atlantis, but thousands upon thousands of them -- those who didn't die in their wheelchairs, or on highway overpasses, or in the ill-fated convention center, or unattended and forgotten in their homes -- sent off on what looked very much like a new trail of tears. Right now, above all, New Orleans and the Mississippi coast, as so many reporters have observed with shock, are simply the Bangladesh of North America (after a disastrous set of monsoons), or a Kinshasa (without the resources).

[saigon68]

8. kick

[tooncesj0nes]

10. while were on the subject, Zimbabwe is as racist as it gets.

[RaleighNCDUer]

11. Oh, well, in that case, never mind.

:eyes: :eyes:

[classysassy]

17. Zimbabwe

please explain why you think Zimbabwe is racist.(payback is a mf.)

[AspenRose]

12. The JOHANNESBURG paper????

WoW. How times have changed, when the former home of apartheid can tell America how racist it is.

:wow:

[RaleighNCDUer]

15. Well, they oughta know whereof they speak. nt

[adigal]

14. How long would evacuation have taken if

Greenwich, CT was flooded?? 1/2 hour?? Or maybe a big delay, and it would have taken the helicopters 1 hour to get there.

I am just sick over this.

[gizmo1979]

16. Who speaks for the whole continent?