Isn't it amazing that the Katrina racism is so overt?

[DancingBear]

I expected it - hell we ALL expected it - but two things stand out.

1) The media acceptance of it - they think nothing of talking with people who are proud to show their colors (no pun intended) on national television. Some may argue that this is done deliberately to show the fool, but I think not.

2) The age-old blame the victim (looter, spending money on handbags, etc.) mentality, which I expected from some folkkks, but not to the degree that it is being promulgated on both hate radio and The White House. I would argue that this is a last gasp effort to shore up the walls was the house falls down - some may disagree.

While I find this show of hate profoundly disturbing, I am heartened by the fact that most of America (who I feel does NOT condone it) are seeing these weasels for who they truly are.

Comments?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. I hope so

the racism I've heard has made me ill.

[chelsea0011]

2. And the lines due to bad information and changing policies.

People are in massive lines in 90+ degree heat and humidity days on end only to be sent elsewhere or told there has been a change in policy today. Outrageous. And the media has the gall to show the Holloway mother on television complaining that Hurricane Corrina(Laura's named hurricane)caused the three suspects in Aruba to be released. Why would she even get a sniff of a story when thousands are suffering in the heat with nothing. We know. We know.

[whistle]

3. New Orleans is not the only American city where racism is overt

....I speak from direct observation here in my town for 34 years, Orlando FL and other Florida cities and municipalities around the state. It has been everywhere, never disappeared, only went back into the shadows.

Now racism is coming forward once again out into the open, encouraged by the reactionary strategy of Gov. Jeb Bush, local and state legilation such as school vouchers, student testing and grading of public schools and so forth.

George Bush and the republican party are turning away from the racist actions and rhetoric, getting the whole rotten ideology an added boost nationally with this Katrina delayed response fiasco engendering survival looting and generalizing total anarchy for the area, thus giving the politicians cause for turning armed troops into a city with orders to shoot with lethal force.

[shaniqua6392]

4. Funny, I just talked about this with my family at dinner tonight.

We are also proud of the fact that the country does seem to object overall. This is what is making shrub's poll numbers drop. But there is still so much racism out there it is sickening. We can expect much better things as soon as we get the white supremacists out of the white house. Many of the repugs I know are racists. Pray for change.

[Randypiper]

5. I have often been shocked by strangers racists comments.

They might not know me in the slightest and will say the vilest thing without any pause. I think they expect comradery but my respect for them completely dissolves.

[Coventina]

6. Closet racists have been given the go-ahead by approval at the top

When the government, at its highest levels, excuses the negligent homicide of thousands of African-Americans, you can be sure that Archie Bunkers everywhere feel more free to spout off.

And having Madame Bush make HER OVERTLY RACIST comments over national media is just icing on the cake for them.

[undergroundpanther]

7. I think they have been barely able to conceal

their racist tendencies and have been so wanting to be "out" about their wicked nazi hearts.Just stress the fucking pigs out and they show what they really are..they stop being so careful..and we can see their true ugly insides they diligently HIDE from the cameras.Once in awhile before this a racist comment would be said by some high official and they'd say bullshit excuses..to make it look like a mistake.. It was no mistake they are elitist racist nazi thugs.

[undergroundpanther]

8. And these rich thugs

Were racists long before the public got even close to becoming honest about the racist things they say before thier eyes.These pigs are from GENERATIONAL elitist racist criminal families .The same families..

[Coventina]

9. You betcha

:thumbsup:

[electron_blue]

10. frankly, every last bit of it is amazing. All the prejudice and fraud

[ismnotwasm]

11. I don't think it's amazing

But I do find it sickening. It's a emotional no win. I'm glad racism has been exposed as alive and well, maybe we can open some long needed national dialog without the typical closeted racist apologists getting away with the shit they usually do. On the other hand I hate what had to happen in order to expose it.

[DancingBear]

12. In hindsight, perhaps I should have said surprising

But it's really not surprising.

I guess what is amazing to me is just the "we're not going to even pretend anymore" in your face part of it.

I would have thought they would have been a bit more covert.

[Lexingtonian]

13. The Last Great Opportunity

that's what it is, and what they guess it is. The window in time in which this behavior is socially acceptable (among their own kind) and there's a chance of ranting their violated arrogance and entitlement to all of the country is rapidly closing.

As disgusting as it is, I'm all for driving them to spill out all of it they can...provided it doesn't result in actions. I want all the hatred and selfarrogation and racialist vanity spoken out in all its over the top ridiculous idiocy- a complete retching out of what lies in them until they get a mental kind of intestinal bleeding, hoping that black Americans can find a way to stand back from the mental projectile vomiting.

The Bush people are tapping into the oldest and crudest politically-tied racism. It was there, it wants out, they temporarily and desperately need the political support it generates to avoid total PR collapse. Like a dying vicious animal it wants out of its cave and into the sunlight one more time...where it will die among terrible screams and spasms.

This is the sort of thing the Bush regime has been about. All the anti-Muslim crap is out and fading a bit since '9/11' and Iraq. All the anti-Semitic stuff was drawn out and used (against John and Teresa). Pete Wilson and Newt Gingrich ran against Latinos in California and the Southwest in the early Nineties; that wave crested and collapsed. The Wen Ho Lee thang was run against Asian-Americans in the late Nineties and fell apart. Anti-Native bigotry was run to the max in the Dakotas the past few years; now it's been dying down and reversed in Montana. Anti-Continentalism was thrown against Chirac and Schroeder and Putin. Now it's Southern anti-black racism being taken to the hilt, a going back to the well that they went to in 2000 because it didn't go dry.

I have a feeling the end of the game is a backlash, a cold anti-WASP period.

[Tomee450]

14. I agree with everything

that has been said about Bush and the Republicans but where are the Democrats? To my knowledge, Howard Dean is the only prominent democrat that has mentioned the race issue. Why isn't Bill Clinton speaking about the racism most of us see. Has Harry Reid said anything about it, John Kerry, Hillary? What about the democrats not in office who don't even have to fear they may lose votes if they speak out. The Democrats are remaining silent while the most vile comments are being said about the victims of this tragedy. Most of them probably voted for democrats. I have been very disappointed with the democrats.

[Lexingtonian]

15. uh...why?

It's not too clear that Democrats can or should assume that they should speak for black people, nor are Republicans demonstrably associating themselves with the racism.

The national Democratic leadership knows that what it says (a) mostly distracts from the issue at hand due to the Republican noise machine that gets thrown at it, (b) still automatically gets discounted by Bush supporters, and (c) Democratic voters don't actually need to be told where the Party is on such things.

The game is to let Republican behavior damage Republican support. Doing almost nothing and saying little- only saying that they don't agree- is by far the most efficient way of decreasing Republican support. It took a lot of foolish Democratic grandstanding by the Liebermans and such for this pattern to sink in, but it finally has.

Lastly, why do you have the psychological need for leading Democrats to say out loud and platitudinously what we all know they think and say and stand for? Isn't that sadly weak and insecure of you to need such emotional propping, a kind of political cowardice to desperately demand that Democrats seize the moral high ground pre-emptively, as if they were some sort of tiny messianic cultism that has no hold or place among the common people and no pragmatism, is utterly pure on racism? Let Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson or Harold Ford or Barack Obama or Cynthia McKinney or Maxine Waters speak up first, or William Jefferson.

If we are a party of the common man, we must- like his friends- be both acutely aware of his failings, i.e. residual racism, and generally deal with it in a humane, careful, gentle, constructive rather than a brutal way. Moralizers never succeed at true reforms; it's the people who start with accepting people as they are and going forwards with them from there that do.