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Catastrophe shows us 2 Americas
San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 9/5/5 | Chip Johnson

Posted on 09/05/2005 2:54:05 PM PDT by SmithL

There are hardly any souls in this country who want to believe their eyes when they glance at the faces of the refugees that Hurricane Katrina left behind to fend for themselves in the once-great city of New Orleans.

To see some of America's poorest residents, virtually all of them African American, scrap and fight for food, for water and for survival, only confirmed for many people that race and class divisions affect every portion of our nation's culture -- right down to providing emergency relief for people whose lives hang in the balance.

And while officials in Washington, D.C., from the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the White House, say everything that can be done is being done, it's next to impossible to gauge the accuracy of those statements from the images flashing on TV screens, Web sites and in news publications from Maine to California.

"I think race is a part of it, and I know class is part of it,'' said Danny Sylvester, 51, of Berkeley. "It's pathetic.''

A Louisiana native, Sylvester said most of his family is safe and sound in Napoleonville, La., but he's very worried about a cousin, Barry Sylvester, who works as a pharmacist in New Orleans. No one has heard from him.

Prominent Oakland defense attorney John Burris questioned how students at overwhelmingly white Tulane University were evacuated two or three days before students at Xavier University, which has a large number of black students including his son Jonathan. Those students were taken by buses to Grambling University, a historically black college north of New Orleans.

(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events; US: Louisiana
KEYWORDS: black; bushsfault; katrina; racism; tourists; twoamericas; white; whitetourists
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Chip should be hollering for the head of Nagin, but that wouldn't fit his agenda.
1 posted on 09/05/2005 2:54:06 PM PDT by SmithL
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To: SmithL

--scrapping and fighting because the Nagin/Blanco administrations had no idea what to do. Those two sure knew how to get elected, though, didn't they?


2 posted on 09/05/2005 2:55:33 PM PDT by Clara Lou (W00t! IBTZ ! FP! w00t!)
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To: SmithL
Of course to race baiters - its about skin color. All I see are people who lost everything. The country is trying to help them. What is the Left doing to pitch in to help besides crying "racism?" Inquiring minds want to know.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
3 posted on 09/05/2005 2:57:09 PM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives On In My Heart Forever)
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To: SmithL

There are two Americas.

One where the people can do for themselves and sometimes need a little help from their neighbors and government.

The other is a group of people who sit around waiting for the government to do it for them.

The big question is "What group are you in?" (Not aimed at you SmithL)


4 posted on 09/05/2005 2:57:46 PM PDT by PeteB570
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To: SmithL

When was New Orleqans a "great city".

Whenever that was it stopped being a "great city" decades ago.


5 posted on 09/05/2005 2:57:50 PM PDT by BenLurkin (O beautiful for patriot dream - that sees beyond the years)
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To: SmithL

There are two Americas: one where people achieve and work for what they have, and another where people are professional chronic victims and are told that they can't


6 posted on 09/05/2005 2:59:00 PM PDT by AbeKrieger (Islam is the virus that causes al-Qaeda.)
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To: SmithL



They can thank their black mayor for being left behind.


7 posted on 09/05/2005 2:59:06 PM PDT by SouthernFreebird
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To: SmithL

Does this mean John (the Breck Girl) Edwards was right after all?


8 posted on 09/05/2005 3:01:30 PM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia
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To: SmithL
"Catastrophe shows us 2 Americas

Those that are idiots and those that aren't.

Even now there are those whose worldly possessions mean more to them than their own lives and they WILL NOT LEAVE.

9 posted on 09/05/2005 3:01:33 PM PDT by Spunky ("Everyone has a freedom of choice, but not of consequences.")
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To: SmithL

>>To see some of America's poorest residents, virtually all of them African American, scrap and fight for food, for water and for survival, only confirmed for many people that race and class divisions affect every portion of our nation's culture -- right down to providing emergency relief for people whose lives hang in the balance. <<

This writer is one of the legion of subhuman scumsucking media maggots who would love nothing more than to see this turn into a bloody race war.


10 posted on 09/05/2005 3:01:40 PM PDT by SerpentDove (In the shadow of the Almighty.)
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To: SmithL

And how many people did those media correspondents who got there so quickly FEED? How many did they EVACUATE? Was anyone SHOOTING at them? What a freaking dumbass! Too dumb to ask the incompetent Mayor and Governor why they did not have a plan (but of course the Mayor got most of the rich white tourists out fast, right?)


11 posted on 09/05/2005 3:02:55 PM PDT by Frank_2001
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To: SmithL

Question in the article:"First, where is even one white face in all the mayhem?"


Answer: They were the ones attacked first http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1476080/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1475595/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1475798/posts


12 posted on 09/05/2005 3:03:27 PM PDT by BenLurkin (O beautiful for patriot dream - that sees beyond the years)
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To: SmithL

Two Americas: The one THAT pays and The one THAT DON'T pay.

Viably self supporting Americans left the area when told to do so.


13 posted on 09/05/2005 3:03:55 PM PDT by putupjob
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To: SmithL

There are two America's to these people. Black and white are the two America's they see and they have been so focused on it they missed the third color bumping them to number three.


14 posted on 09/05/2005 3:03:59 PM PDT by satchmodog9 (Murder and weather are our only news)
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To: SmithL

Probably because the leadership at "white" Tulane looked at a storm of 175 mph winds and said. WE don't need to be told by the government to get the hell out of Dodge? That has nothing to do with color Barris. It has to do with survival mode.


15 posted on 09/05/2005 3:04:07 PM PDT by lexington minuteman 1775
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To: SmithL

Two Americas indeed -- people who know how to survive and people who know how to blame.


16 posted on 09/05/2005 3:04:22 PM PDT by bboop
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To: SmithL
It's as though some people expected the government to be standing right outside New Orleans with the Army, Marines, Coast Guard, FEMA and the Lone Ranger carrying ten billion dollars in his saddle bag. Oh, did I forget the First Air Cavalry Division hovering 2,000 rescue choppers over New Orleans, braving the hurricane winds?

In all honesty, when people politicize these things to any serious degree it makes me sick. I don't see how the government could have performed too much better even if it happened in Washington, D.C. Some Americans, (mostly those weened on TV and video games, watching Sci Fi movies and Super Heros coming to the rescue), have a really distorted and limited vision of reality.

17 posted on 09/05/2005 3:04:32 PM PDT by TheCrusader ("The frenzy of the Mohammedans has devastated the churches of God" -Pope Urban II, 1097AD)
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To: SmithL
Catastrophe shows us 2 Americas

Gee,picking Senator John Edwards campaign slogan for the headline,how quaint,and I`m sure that it is just a coincidence.

18 posted on 09/05/2005 3:04:50 PM PDT by carlr
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To: SmithL
There are two Americas:

1. The America of the filthy, subhuman looter.

2. An America for the rest of us who suffer them.

19 posted on 09/05/2005 3:05:11 PM PDT by Wormwood (Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!)
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To: SerpentDove

Racial conflict + a loony antiwar movement, the Left would LOVE to bring back the '60s, believe me!


20 posted on 09/05/2005 3:06:07 PM PDT by Frank_2001
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