the wiley urban arayan hunter-gatherer of new orleans
one of the most interesting aspects of watching the tragic effects of hurricane katrina play out in the media has been to watch the way race plays out in the coverage. the prime example has been the tendency to ascribe different names to the same survival oriented activities, depending on whether the people in question are black or white.
one of the most intersting instances of this was the story noting two photos from the yahoo news photo service. both photos show new orleans residents wading in chest deep water with hard-won groceries. one, featuring two white folks, is captioned, "Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store...". the other, a photo of a black man, reads, "A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store in New Orleans".
best copies of the photos here.
hmm..
yahoo has pulled one of the photos (the white guys) at the request of the photographer, and issued an apologetic statement, but since the photos and captions were from different sources, the point is not so much to cry 'racist' as to look at the underlying racism in our culture that leads ALL of us to read a black folks attempts to survive as 'looting'.
if anyone has missed kanye west's comments on this subject... well youre in for a treat. at a katrina benefit concert last week, kanye made mike meyers get all squirmy by departing from the standard tragedy script on the tele-prompter to talk a bit more about everybody's favorite president's handling of the disaster.
his comments included these gems:
"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."
"America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible".
"George Bush doesn't care about black people."
video here.
now, some humor. as alice walker once said, 'nothing is funnier, or frees the heart more, than the truth.' thats why i like The Onion.
White Foragers Report Threat Of Black Looters
NEW ORLEANS—Throughout the Gulf Coast, Caucasian suburbanites attempting to gather food and drink in the shattered wreckage of shopping districts have reported seeing AfricanAmericans "looting snacks and beer from damaged businesses." "I was in the abandoned Wal-Mart gathering an air mattress so I could float out the potato chips, beef jerky, and Budweiser I'd managed to find," said white survivor Lars Wrightson, who had carefully selected foodstuffs whose salt and alcohol content provide protection against contamination. "Then I look up, and I see a whole family of [African-Americans] going straight for the booze. Hell, you could see they had already looted a fortune in diapers." Radio stations still in operation are advising store owners and white people in the affected areas to locate firearms in sporting-goods stores in order to protect themselves against marauding blacks looting gun shops.
(from the Onion)
one of the most intersting instances of this was the story noting two photos from the yahoo news photo service. both photos show new orleans residents wading in chest deep water with hard-won groceries. one, featuring two white folks, is captioned, "Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store...". the other, a photo of a black man, reads, "A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store in New Orleans".
best copies of the photos here.
hmm..
yahoo has pulled one of the photos (the white guys) at the request of the photographer, and issued an apologetic statement, but since the photos and captions were from different sources, the point is not so much to cry 'racist' as to look at the underlying racism in our culture that leads ALL of us to read a black folks attempts to survive as 'looting'.
if anyone has missed kanye west's comments on this subject... well youre in for a treat. at a katrina benefit concert last week, kanye made mike meyers get all squirmy by departing from the standard tragedy script on the tele-prompter to talk a bit more about everybody's favorite president's handling of the disaster.
his comments included these gems:
"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."
"America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible".
"George Bush doesn't care about black people."
video here.
now, some humor. as alice walker once said, 'nothing is funnier, or frees the heart more, than the truth.' thats why i like The Onion.
White Foragers Report Threat Of Black Looters
NEW ORLEANS—Throughout the Gulf Coast, Caucasian suburbanites attempting to gather food and drink in the shattered wreckage of shopping districts have reported seeing AfricanAmericans "looting snacks and beer from damaged businesses." "I was in the abandoned Wal-Mart gathering an air mattress so I could float out the potato chips, beef jerky, and Budweiser I'd managed to find," said white survivor Lars Wrightson, who had carefully selected foodstuffs whose salt and alcohol content provide protection against contamination. "Then I look up, and I see a whole family of [African-Americans] going straight for the booze. Hell, you could see they had already looted a fortune in diapers." Radio stations still in operation are advising store owners and white people in the affected areas to locate firearms in sporting-goods stores in order to protect themselves against marauding blacks looting gun shops.
(from the Onion)
posted by andy at 5:46 PM
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