Katrina: Comtemporary Screams of Agony ( "authentic courage")

[donsu]

http://www.blackcommentator.com/150/150_howcott_katrina.html

There are no words to express what we have witnessed in news accounts out of Louisiana and Mississippi. Overused terms such as revulsion, horror, terror and outrage just don’t compensate. The combined federal abandonment and neglecting to death of perhaps tens of thousands of mostly Black people in hurricane Katrina’s affected regions and the failure of a mostly White dominated media to accurately and fairly report their truths in its aftermath have been absolutely stunning.

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We embroider together our knowledge of historical conditions with the present and are staggered by the devastating screams of mass hunger and thirst and the sounds of torture we hear from unbearable numbers of Black people. We are keenly aware of the psychological impact of living alongside the dying and dead (as our foremothers and fathers did on slave ships), and the sheer magnitude of our collective loss. We know how the psychosocial development of Black children in the region are being affected every day, and how that will affect us all as a people. We try to imagine how brotha’s and sistah’s with HIV/AIDS, diabetes and cancers must be suffering with no medication and medical care.

We wonder why horrible rapes of foreign women on their own soil by American “liberating” troops are not as enthusiastically reported as are the shocking rapes perpetrated by the emotionally and socio-economically destitute of New Orleans. We are appalled by reports describing White folks “as American citizens finding goods for their needs” while referencing Black folk who are finding goods for their needs as “looters” and “out of control refugees.” We question where the White thieves are, who we know are functioning throughout the area. And, we know the same cable “news” personnel who have presented excellent grounds for disbarment from professional credibility will likely be awarded for journalistic excellence for, among other things, downgrading Black citizen status.

-snip-

The facts are we’re witnessing the ravages of living in a racist (sexist, and homophobic) society wherein Black lives are consistently treated less valuably than White life. Most White people simply don’t move as quickly, think as lucidly, contemplate as masterfully, or speak as prophetically regarding specifically Black life. Though there is plenty of room to be critical of some White’s, FEMA and the federal government as a whole - and I am - this is for those of us who would reduce the force of reality as if devouring a bag of chips for comfort or drinking several cocktails toward intoxication. Many more of us Black folk need to interrupt our own illusions to comprehend that ever-present racism as it hovers all around us clawing away at our past and potential successes. Look, so you can see it evidenced all around you - even through your aloofness and privilege – look. Your seeing, dear reader and your mindfulness might have you intelligently contribute to a plan for our collective survival as solid as our individual household plans for escaping natural disasters. Arguably one of the most brilliant, prolific thinkers of the early 1900’s, a Black intellectual superstar, Dr. W.E.B. Dubois saw himself as “bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of them that live within the Veil…” We should afford ourselves and our own people no less indulgence in our lifetime.
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[peacetalksforall]

1. We need to divorce them. Split the country 73-27. We get to keep OUR

Constitution and Bill of Rights.

This was a racist, sexist, phobic hurricane. It didn't come in as one, but it became one because man messed with it - by design.