Feline Warrior

CBS News | Race An Issue In Katrina Response | September 3, 2005

Favorite quotes:

CBS Radio News reports that New Orleans City Councilman Oliver Thomas said people are too afraid of black people to go in and save them. He added that rumors of shootings and riots are making people afraid to take in people who are being portrayed as thugs and thieves.

Condoleezza Rice: “That Americans would somehow in a color-affected way decide who to help and who not to help, I, I just don’t believe it,” she said. “The African-American community has obviously been very heavily affected. But people are doing what they can for Americans. Nobody wants to see any American suffer.”

Rev. Jesse Jackson: “We have an amazing tolerance for black pain,” he told CNN on Friday. He questioned why the U.S. military couldn’t house many of the homeless on unused military airbases, adding that more people will die of starvation and dehydration than from drowning.

Indeed.

It’s not that people shouldn’t have access to information on this horrible situation. We should know what’s going on. What I’ve been noticing is the continued trend to brand disasters. And it’s probably necessary in a competitive world, eh? Here’s Katrina: Disaster on the Gulf Coast. CBS wants us to read about Katrina (well, about the victims and survivors thereof) on their web site, not on any other web site.

Fox has a Survivor’s Blog and a Hurricane Katrina Forum. ABC News has Hurricane Katrina: State of Emergency and a Forum. And of course, NBC has partnered with MSN to bring us MSNBC, and they’ve got Katrina’s Devastation. Each of those has its own look and has its own approach to reporting the storm. (Although there are only so many ways to approach this.)

This image (by Eric Gay/AP) shows a little slice of togetherness among ages and races. MmHmm. Speaking of race, listen to a great piece by Lester Spence on NPR. NPR’s blurb about it: “A wave of pictures have flooded the media depicting the devastation of Katrina. Commentator Lester Spence says that to some viewers, it appears as if the images have been “racialized.” Spence is an assistant professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University.” Spence talks about how New Orleans’ African American population has been depicted primarily in stereotypes. I stopped what I was doing to listen to this on Friday.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t include a link to Network for Good, so you can go do some good things for people all over the world in need of assistance.