So-called black leaders and other assorted entertainers and
racial activists were quick to use Hurricane Katrina and its
resulting flood as supposed proof that America’s tragic racist
personality had suddenly resurfaced. “Genocide” was the way the
morning show hosts of New York’s no. 1 rap station, Hot 97,
described it. The real racial tragedy, however, is not a lack of
respect or compassion but the giant distance by which these
spokesmen have been left behind by America’s steadily advancing
society.
One point that was seized upon with disturbing zeal was the
canard claiming that newscasters were labeling white looters as
“just looking for food” while only their black counterparts were
described as “looters.” The rumor was spawned after two photos from
two separate wire services described two separate incidents, using
different words in the two separate captions — the result being
that a black person was identified as having just “looted” while a
white person was identified as having just “found” food.
Both cameramen stick by their captions. Chris Graythen, the
Agence France-Presse photographer, said, “I believed in my
opinion, that they did simply find them, and not ‘looted’ them in
the definition of the word. The people were swimming in chest deep
water, and there were other people in the water, both white and
black.” Aaron Kinney, the Associated Press photographer,
said he slugged the photo with the word “loot” because he had just
seen his subject loot a store.
No matter. The pictures ricocheted around the Internet and
anyone with a bit of sensitivity was soon denouncing the blatantly
unfair way the media was treating Katrina’s minority victims. Kanye
West, the producer-cum-rapper, was one such myth perpetuator. In a
now-notorious appearance on NBC’s “A Concert for Hurricane Relief,”
Mr. West said:
I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see
a black family, it says they’re looting. See a white family, it
says they’re looking for food. And you know that it’s been five
days, because most of the people are black …
America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less
well off as slow as possible …
They’ve given them permission to go down and shoot us …
George Bush doesn’t care about black people.
Days later the determinedly unrepentant Mr. West described
President Bush’s failure to prepare levees for Category 5
hurricanes as evidence of his ill-will toward black America,
saying, “They have been trying to sweep us [African-Americans]
under the kitchen sink and it was so in people’s faces and so on TV
… that they couldn’t even hide it any more.”
“If these people hadn’t been poor and black,” said Rep. William
Jefferson, a black Democrat who represents most of New Orleans,
“they wouldn’t have been left in New Orleans in the first
place.”
Deploring what he called racially insensitive news coverage, the
Rev. Jesse Jackson said, “The Red Cross will not go in there
because it is too dangerous. The rescue has been slow because some
see us as foreigners and 2/3 human.”
The Reverend Al Sharpton visited the Houston Astrodome and
labeled the relief effort “inexcusable,” saying race had played a
factor.
Author of “The Debt — What America Owes to Blacks,” Randall
Robinson, blogged on the Huffington Post:
Four days after the storm, thousands of blacks in New
Orleans are dying like dogs. No one has come to help them.
I am a sixty-four year old African-American. New Orleans marks
the end of the America I strove for.
I am hopeless. I am sad. I am angry against my country for doing
nothing when it mattered.
This is what we have come to. This defining watershed moment in
America’s racial history…
On the John Gambling talk radio show on ABC, it was
reported that, in the days following the disaster, a rumor
circulated the Astrodome that the levees had been intentionally
blown up so that Louisiana could engage in a bit of “ethnic
cleansing.” Hot 97’s “Ms. Jones in the Morning” show bought into
this theory, suggesting that the inadequate relief effort was the
product of a plot by rich white businessmen to purge the area’s
impoverished blacks so that the city could be more profitably
redeveloped.
In the bleak days of yore, such paranoia could be justified.
Today, it is ridiculous. There has yet to be a report of a single
newscaster using racial considerations when making “looters” versus
“looking for food” rhetorical decisions — yet the rumor has, to a
large degree, been unquestionably accepted. Likewise, the Hot 97
morning show hosts were seemingly unconcerned that they had zero
evidence to back up their claim that this was all part of some
racially sinister, capitalist plot. However, in the real world, the
outpouring of relief and the offering of homes have been
unprecedented only in its magnanimity.
This recent outbreak of unfounded suspicion is just the latest
in a long line of popular black skepticism of whites and the
government. Earlier this year a study was jointly published by the
Rand Corp. and Oregon State University that found that almost half
of all black Americans believe the AIDS virus is man-made; 12%
believe it was created and spread by the CIA; and a majority
believes a cure is being withheld from the public. Fifteen percent
said AIDS is a form of genocide against black people.
In the early 1990s, San Jose’s Mercury News printed a
series of articles that speculated there might be some relationship
between Sandinista drug dealers, the CIA, and the spreading crack
endemic in California cities. While the connection was never proven
to be anything greater than a bout of conspiracy and irresponsible
journalism, many blacks — led, in part, by Jesse Jackson and Rep.
Maxine Waters — nonetheless bought into the theory that the CIA
was selling crack to inner-city blacks to both ruin their
communities as well as to raise money to fight communists in South
America.
To understand where such fanciful paranoia originates is to
appreciate the true effects of the victimist ideology these
proselytizers peddle. Na’im Akbar, a Florida State University
professor of psychology who specializes in “African American
behavior,” said in response to the AIDS study, “This is not a bunch
of crazy people running around saying they’re out to get us. [The
belief] comes from the reality of 300 years of slavery and 100
years of post-slavery exploitation.”
Jamal Watson, executive editor of the New York Amsterdam
News, a black newspaper, asked (somewhat incorrectly): “Why
are all of the poor people living in the city of New Orleans
black?” Instead of looking for cultural indicators within the black
community, Mr. Watson immediately pronounces “slavery” as the
culprit. “The legal and social tradition of mistreating blacks
started with American slavery and has continued uninterrupted ever
since.” Uninterrupted? Like far too many, Mr. Watson can’t see a
difference between America in 1860 and 2005.
If the best these professional race activists can muster to
justify this ingrained skepticism is a tired yet sanctimonious
invocation of slavery, it shows just how detached they’ve become.
Resultantly, black Americans’ worst fears are being taken advantage
of and a healthier American society falls by the wayside. By
indulging in conspiracy theories and blame-anyone-but-yourself
psychotherapy, the emphasis on personal responsibility that can
make social equality possible is injuriously neglected.
While Hurricane Katrina has unearthed many previously
underappreciated American deficiencies, racial intolerance was not
one of them. Instead, we’ve learned that many prominent black
activists are no more reliable as leaders than the levees were as
protectors for New Orleans’s impoverished blacks.
