Poor, Black, Left Behind: the political invisibility of people of color

[Karmadillo]

If this has already been posted, I apologize. The article is Mike Davis' excellent analysis of the inadequate response to Hurricane Ivan last year. He provides a nice analysis of why the Democrats lose, lose, and then lose again.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=6292

The evacuation of New Orleans in the face of Hurricane Ivan 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.

New Orleans had spent decades preparing for inevitable submersion by the storm surge of a class-five hurricane. Civil defense officials conceded they had ten thousand body bags on hand to deal with the worst-case scenario. But no one seemed to have bothered to devise a plan to evacuate the city's poorest or most infirm residents. The day before the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast, New Orlean's daily, the Times-Picayune, ran an alarming story about the "large group...mostly concentrated in poorer neighborhoods" who wanted to evacuate but couldn't.

Only at the last moment, with winds churning Lake Pontchartrain, did Mayor Ray Nagin reluctantly open the Louisiana Superdome and a few schools to desperate residents. He was reportedly worried that lower-class refugees might damage or graffiti the Superdome.

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On the fiftieth anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the United States seems to have returned to degree zero of moral concern for the majority of descendants of slavery and segregation. Whether the Black poor live or die seems to merit only haughty disinterest and indifference. Indeed, in terms of the life-and-death issues that matter most to African-Americans -- structural unemployment, race-based super-incarceration, police brutality, disappearing affirmative action programs, and failing schools -- the present presidential election might as well be taking place in the 1920s.

But not all the blame can be assigned to the current occupant of the former slave-owners' mansion at the end of Pennsylvania Avenue. The mayor of New Orleans, for example, is a Black Democrat, and Los Angeles County is a famously Democratic bastion. No, the political invisibility of people of color is a strictly bipartisan endeavor. On the Democratic side, it is the culmination of the long crusade waged by the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) to exorcise the specter of the 1980s Rainbow Coalition.

more...

[ananda]

1. conflicted about Nagin..

Sometimes I really like Nagin, when he speaks out for the people. Until now, I thought he was so admirable.

But then he got really annoying when he softpedaled regarding Bush. After all, Bush let him take a shower in AF1.

Now I've learned that he didn't use school buses to get people out of NOLA, and that he waited till late in the game to open the Superdome because he feared damage and graffiti.

Does he live on planet earth? Anyone in their right mind would've known that Katrina would make any human damage or graffiti moot. Lord!

Sue

[Nay]

4. Wasn't the "black Democratic mayor" a Republican just a couple

of years ago, and changed his affiliation just so he could run for mayor? That hardly makes the guy a real Democrat.

I was pleased at his angry speech about the lack of response to the disaster, but I agree that he sure has a lot of Republican shit going on in his brain.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. No, no, no, no! It's not about racism.

How could you think such a thing? If all those people on rooftops, in the stadium, in the hospitals and nursing homes, had been middle-class whites, they would have been neglected equally.

Wouldn't they?

Of course what's really important is that missing white girl in Aruba.

[pippin]

3. Third World America

Right in the heart of this nation.

[Karmadillo]

5. Kick

nt