Katrina's Aftermath: Race and Class in America
A great deal has been made about race in terms of the sluggish federal reaction to rendering aid and assistance to those wracked by Katrina; at least, a great deal has been made of it in the media. Kanye West's outburst during a fundraiser for victims of Katrina soon became late night talk show fodder. "George Bush hates black people," said West, who I have to assume was going off-script. West was angry and frustrated; his co-presenter for that segment, Mike Meyers, tried hard not to look mortified; Chris Tucker, who followed West, looked like somebody took a crap in the middle of the stage. Tucker's reaction was pretty right on the mark, however, and it wasn't necessarily because West overstated the point.
I remember one election year, maybe 1984, when Jesse Jackson ran for President of the United States. He was speaking to a group of people, among them a white family. Their son, who was probably eight or nine years old, asked Jackson, when he was President, if he would make white people into slaves. Jackson just hugged him and held him, and I remember realizing that this signified something important, but I was mystified at the time.
Many of us are so damaged in our ability to deal with people of different ethnicities and cultures that we might not even know the extent to which we've been harmed. Thus was the case of the little boy, asking a Presidential candidate if he would "go despot" to achieve some sort of racial revenge on those who had kidnapped and enslaved his ancestors.
The same is true in terms of classicism in the U.S. Many notions are so ingrained in our being about economic class that a lot of people take them as truisms. I know one person who was furious about FEMA and the Red Cross distributing debit cards to the victims of Katrina. "They'll just waste the money--they don't know what to do with it!" she seethed. "They're all a bunch of worthless fucking criminals and they'll just sped it on drugs!" My lower jaw swayed in the breeze.
Others take a different approach to the poor and disenfranchised, viewing them as plucky if not downright heroic figures, chinning it out against adversity. A nice thought to have while you're flipping through your latest Williams Sonoma catalog while the reality for others is starkly less comfortable.
One of the stories I read in the wake of Katrina's aftermath discussed the reconstruction of New Orleans in general and the creation of new middle-class housing in particular. New apartment complexes, new condomeniums. Houses--no, homes--for rent and sale. There would be no reconstruction of the shotgun shacks inhabited by that city's poorest residents, even for the purposes of adding "color" or "character" to the community. No, it was all a force majeure gentrification project, because this time they were going to do it better than ever before. This time, they were going to do it right.
I remember one election year, maybe 1984, when Jesse Jackson ran for President of the United States. He was speaking to a group of people, among them a white family. Their son, who was probably eight or nine years old, asked Jackson, when he was President, if he would make white people into slaves. Jackson just hugged him and held him, and I remember realizing that this signified something important, but I was mystified at the time.
Many of us are so damaged in our ability to deal with people of different ethnicities and cultures that we might not even know the extent to which we've been harmed. Thus was the case of the little boy, asking a Presidential candidate if he would "go despot" to achieve some sort of racial revenge on those who had kidnapped and enslaved his ancestors.
The same is true in terms of classicism in the U.S. Many notions are so ingrained in our being about economic class that a lot of people take them as truisms. I know one person who was furious about FEMA and the Red Cross distributing debit cards to the victims of Katrina. "They'll just waste the money--they don't know what to do with it!" she seethed. "They're all a bunch of worthless fucking criminals and they'll just sped it on drugs!" My lower jaw swayed in the breeze.
Others take a different approach to the poor and disenfranchised, viewing them as plucky if not downright heroic figures, chinning it out against adversity. A nice thought to have while you're flipping through your latest Williams Sonoma catalog while the reality for others is starkly less comfortable.
One of the stories I read in the wake of Katrina's aftermath discussed the reconstruction of New Orleans in general and the creation of new middle-class housing in particular. New apartment complexes, new condomeniums. Houses--no, homes--for rent and sale. There would be no reconstruction of the shotgun shacks inhabited by that city's poorest residents, even for the purposes of adding "color" or "character" to the community. No, it was all a force majeure gentrification project, because this time they were going to do it better than ever before. This time, they were going to do it right.
posted by Robovike @ 8:13 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home