Posted on 09/07/2005 8:04:44 AM PDT by madprof98
Here in America, the land of opportunity, we gave up on the poor more than two decades ago. Under the careful tutelage of Ronald Reagan and other conservatives, we learned that the poor were simply too lazy to improve their prospects and their misery was their own fault.
We gave up on the white poor and the black poor, even though black Americans had suffered under three centuries of unconscionable oppression before a brief period — less than three decades — when they began to be treated as fully human. We gave up on the Native American poor, though they had been the victims of a historic savagery amounting to a holocaust.
We not only gave up trying to help the poor, but we also bought the argument that trying to assist them, especially through government programs, would just make matters worse. After all, years of relentless right-wing radio have taught us that the poor are illiterate, sick and jobless because of government welfare policies — or because they choose to be. So we turned our backs on the impoverished and tuned them out, leaving them stranded in the worst neighborhoods, worst schools and the worst geography — next to landfills, on top of toxic dumps, in the swamps.
So the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina — with its pathetic images of desperately poor people, mostly black people, stuck in New Orleans without food, water or adequate shelter after all the affluent people had fled — should come as no surprise. This is a natural consequence of a political and social culture that has decreed: You're poor? Why would anyone want to be poor? Tough luck. You're on your own.
In fact, The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune used just those words to describe the hurricane evacuation plan authorities put in place for residents who didn't own cars. Reporter Bruce Nolan wrote in July, "City, state and federal authorities are preparing to give the poorest of New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own. In scripted appearances being recorded now, officials such as Mayor Ray Nagin, local Red Cross Executive Director Kay Wilkins and City Council President Oliver Thomas drive home the word that the city does not have the resources to move out of harm's way an estimated 134,000 people without transportation."
At least Nagin and his fellow city officials were trying to figure out how to get the poor out of town if disaster struck. Working with an anti-poverty agency and the Red Cross, they envisioned a private initiative, Operation Brother's Keeper, in which churches would enlist members with cars to offer rides to the have-nots.
By contrast, the ill-informed, incompetent Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is still puzzled by all those poor people who refused to order their chauffeurs to crank up the Bentleys. Last week, he told CNN:
"I think the death toll may go into the thousands. And unfortunately, that's going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the evacuation warnings. And I don't make judgments about why people choose not to evacuate. But you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. And to find people still there is just heart-wrenching to me because the mayor did everything he could to get them out of there."
If you're somebody like Brown, it's awfully easy to forget that there are people too poor to have a car, a credit card or a checking account, people stranded outside the magic circle, people without friends in high places. With Brown's GOP connections, he landed a job at FEMA after he was forced out as so-called czar of the International Arabian Horse Association.
In fact, it's easy for all of us who live in relative prosperity to forget that most of us are here because we had the good sense to be born to the right parents. While a few impoverished young adults can still scratch and claw their way into the mainstream, it is getting harder and harder to do so as the industrial jobs that created the great middle class are disappearing. (Why do you think so many working-class sons and daughters volunteer for the U.S. armed forces?) Income inequality is increasing in this country; the latest census shows that the number of people living in poverty is rising.
Still, a few predictable voices on the far-right fringe are already thinking up ways to blame Hurricane Katrina's victims for their plight. Some are playing up the lawlessness of a few thugs, others are casting responsibility for the crisis solely on local authorities. Haven't we listened to those callous self-promoters long enough?
Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed levees and exploded the conventional wisdom about a shared American prosperity, exposing a group of people so poor they didn't have $50 for a bus ticket out of town. If we want to learn something from this disaster, the lesson ought to be: America's poor deserve better than this.
— Cynthia Tucker is the editorial page editor. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays.
Must be awful to live in a country you hate this much.
This is getting comedic.
Just a few make it you know.
A few? Talk about living on another planet.
I'm surprised she could write this column through her tears.
This must be why Bush and Rove planned the hurricane -- to get rid of the problem. /sarcasm
"Under the careful tutelage of Ronald Reagan and other conservatives, we learned that the poor were simply too lazy to improve their prospects and their misery was their own fault."
Actually I believe it is liberal writers who are simply too lazy to improve their prospects and are to blame for their own misery.
"If you're somebody like Brown, it's awfully easy to forget that there are people too poor to have a car..."
Maybe that is why the N.O. city evacuation plan envisioned using city buses to take out those without transportation. Too bad the Mayor was too busy sipping Starbucks in Baton Rouge to implement the plan.
I guess FEMA should provide everyone with a car prior to any storm.
Keep on talking Cynthia, idiots like you will halp improve Bush's poll numbers.
Black Americans have suffered for 300 years?
So people who work their butts off to earn a living are now the bad guys???
Hmmmm interesting and as to there not being any jobs? SURPRISE
these people are being offered jobs but I don't hear about any takers yet, utoh what will you be able to say than fool?
If these so called people who you say cant get jobs when in reality they WONT take the jobs offered to them what will be your excuse than for why they won't take the jobs??
Because they are single mothers who keep on having babies and now there's no one to care for the babies? Will that be your next excuse for the non-workers?
They always had the option of self reliance, but they have been taught their entire lives that all of their needs can only be supplied by the government.
That is why they are so poor.
If nothing else good comes from this horror, perhaps some thousands of people will be exposed to others who choose not to live in bondage on your plantation
Tucker is an anatomical miracle: She's able to simultaneously have her nose stuck high in the air and deeply imbedded in her own butt.
She should be written up an some medical journal someplace.
I'm sure someone, somewhere, has some figures of the billions of dollars spent on or given to the poor blacks in New Orleans alone. This is one of those "who cut the cheese" articles.
Most be those old folks who were invited to Chuck Berry's Teenage Wedding
I just listened to my Chuck Berry the Great 28 CD yesteday. Every other song is about his love for an underage girl. It is kinda humourous.
If anything comes of this I would hope that the American Black Community looks at what they saw on the media outlets and asks itself; "is this really us?" Their rage should then be directed at those that have a vested interest and investment in the maintenance of an "underclass" mentality and population. Without these people, the JJs and Sharptons are nothing. If you have people that are being brought up to think and believe what one young woman said into the camera last week, you have little hope of changing. She said: "Dos dat has gits. dos dat don't has, don't gits". I'm sorry but all the money in the world cannot compensate for that level of ignorance. Thanks Jesse.
They didn't have $50 for a bus ticket, but I'll betcha they had enough for an expensive pair of tennis shoes..
The sad part these libs do not get is that 80%+ of the poor are poor because of their poor choices. Yes there are the disabled and those who have had temporary setbacks, but most of those will pull themselves up sooner or later. The vast majority of the poor are poor due to their lack of vision. They doo drugs, drop out and do not get an education. They stay in a region where ther are no jobs and then complain. I do not mind giveing someone a hand up, but I am tired of those who feel we owe people who are responcible ofr their own bad lot a living.
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