Posted on 09/14/2005 3:32:33 PM PDT by HairOfTheDog
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
~Martin Luther King Jr.
Yesterday as I sat and waited for an appointment with the director of a local agency for the homeless, I saw this quote on a poster on the wall. It's a great quote. I stared at it as I continued to think about the situation in New Orleans and the surrounding areas devastated by hurricane Katrina.
I've found the debate on Free Republic and elsewhere nearly intolerable in the wake of Katrina. As a political conservative with a long job history of helping the homeless and the poor, I have a much more complex view of people and poverty than some here. I am not one of those 'lucky' people who see only one small aspect of it and could therefore post quickly and sharply about what they saw. Those lucky people see losers who are receiving the deserved outcome for their poor decisions. They see lesser human beings and incompetent democrats as the simple and definable cause. It's not ~our~ problem, it's ~their~ problem.
When I looked at the faces of those people at the convention center, they were not foreign to me. I know them. I've spent years working with people who are poor and/or unemployed; some temporarily, some permanently…. Some good, and some very bad, and some still walking the line who could go one way or the other. They'll choose the path that looks like it will pay off. I've had impact at that moment of choice, in my work, and have helped some of my clients go the right way. Not all, but enough that I felt my desk and my job were not a waste of space and money. I learned a lot there.
I've learned from their stories that I had some things in common with them. I too, had spent some time being unemployed with a negative bank balance. I'd never sought help for it from some agency or charity, but that was because I had something they did not: A successful family and successful friends, who not only were there to help me when my life took a downturn, but also were there to expect more from me. These people, by and large, didn't have that. Many do not know anyone who ~is~ successful enough to help them. They may have seen successful people on TV, they may see them drive by in nice cars, but to the chronically poor those people look as foreign and hard to understand as street people do to the occupants of the nice cars. Neither sees the other as someone they could be. IMHO, they're both wrong.
But lets go back to the people in the nice cars for a minute, because they're the once I'm talking to now. The people posting on this forum who think they see the whole problem as the fault of the refugees. The ones that say it's not ~our~ problem, it's ~their~ problem. With that solved in their mind, they set out to post simple rants that make clear their view that they are superior to this problem, that they would never have been trapped the way the people at the convention center were. Those posters have seen all the conflicting images I have, but can file it neatly into their world view. They see only losers and looters, they see only people who they can't imagine being. And many punctuate their posts with simple racism that speaks more accurately than I would wish, of views that are still alive and well inside the republican voter base. To those whose only input is to classify this as a race issue I say you are not only outdated and shallow in your worldview, but unhelpful to those who will lead this country. You offer nothing we need.
I reject their views as not only wrong and uninformed, but as emotional and impractical as the world views often expressed by Jessie Jackson. To those who say these people are responsible for their own helplessness, or undeserving of help, I say "OK – close your eyes and think that. Now open them. Oops. They're still here. We still have to deal with the poor refugees of this storm. So now what?"
What do we do when we have to condemn an entire city and move them, willingly or not, somewhere else? It's easy to loathe the welfare programs these people have been living on when they were invisibly in the bad part of town…. Now the barrier that kept them from view is gone. The city that hid them from us has been condemned…. And man there's a lot of them.
I know well the people who will move in to help these people. They're good people, for the most part. I've worked with them and learned from them. When I was very new and conservatively naïve about charity and welfare and poor people, they told me the truth. The only difference between a social worker's outlook and the average suburban conservative's outlook is their assigned role in actually dealing with it. What the rest of us just opine about, they have in their inbox. They know who they're dealing with, they know which people can be helped, and they know which ones will not be helped. They help the ones they can, and they work their butts off and have a lot of good impact. I'm not talking about the leadership at these agencies, the ones who have to write grant proposals and talk in flowery language about helping the poor… And I'm certainly not talking about the pompous blaming bafflecrap we get from politicians. I'm talking about the front line workers… the ones who I've spent hours with, in break-rooms and in bars after hours, talking about our days.
Those who are very new to dealing with the poor often fit into one of two perspectives. They either(1) think that by classifying people as losers they have completed their participation in the subject, or they (2) think they want to help, and they think their acts of charity will be universally appreciated and accepted with the enthusiasm a stranded golden retriever would have toward their rescuer. These people aren't golden retrievers. They are people who bring with them such baggage as they could carry, often times the only baggage they have left is that they carry in their own minds. Some of them think life has been very unfair to them. And you know what? Some of them are right. These people have had a crappy thing happen to them with this storm.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
~Martin Luther King Jr.
These people have been tested, and are still being tested, by this challenge. Some have indeed reacted to the situation with utter incivility. The media loves to focus on them, and so we saw lots of looters. It's tempting in a crisis to focus on the one thing that is the most obvious, to the exclusion of everything else. As a pilot, I learned to avoid fixation and keep working the problem in emergency procedure drills, that fixation on one aspect of the problem can lead you to fail to deal with the rest of the emergency. Those lessons apply to this situation as well. Yes, we know there was a criminal element to this crisis. But also happening are other crises that don't stop happening just because we aren't looking at them. Real people who's real ability to get over this crisis is being tested. They need our help, and they are worthy of it. They aren't foreign to most of us, if we sat down and listened to what they have been through. I could be them. If I had been caught by this hurricane, this 'evacuation order' at many points in my life, I'd have been unable to consider, at a moment's notice, to pack up what I could carry and leave my home, perhaps indefinitely, without help from anyone. I am a republican, I am white, I am female, and I could be one of them.
What do we do now? As republicans, what do we offer these refugees? See, they are not the only ones being measured by this crisis, we are too. We want to lead this country, we ~are~ leading this country, and it's in our inbox.
I can tell you what I ~don't~ think we should do. I don't think we should talk down to these people or talk down about hurricane refugees as some class of people who all fit in the same box. Simply writing them off as the undesirables is not an option. That's WAY too easy to say, and solves nothing.
While the rest of the shallowly political on both sides argue and blame and say ugly things, I want conservatives to be measured as being better than that. The democrats in this country haven't had a good idea in years. Now is our chance to look at this enormous crisis with the practical, compassionate, Christian ideals that I know we possess. We need to pitch in and help, with both our effort, and our good example, and we should not tolerate those on either side who would put these refugees in a box, whether it's out of low expectations, or out of fear.
This has been a long rambling post, I know, for those who have stuck with me, but that's what I was thinking about as I stared at the Martin Luther King poster at the shelter.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
~Martin Luther King Jr.
I agree... we are the best forum on the net, and for many varied reasons. Most of all, the thing that makes it work is that it is well moderated. Policing a forum like this, or for that matter anything... is an art form, not a science.
We do need to work on the fast-breaking live thread though. Sometimes we not only lose our civility but get downright savage. That's the whole point of your MLK quote above. You're right, it's a great quote, and a good lesson. :-)
Great post. It all comes out in the wash. The Bible expresses an ideal way of man v. man, and your post "gets it."
Damn. I did not know about rdb3 and mhking leaving.
That *blows*. I truly hope it is something that can blow over and they will come back.
Guys: don't let the bastards get you down. :-)
Not a good option.... We're just in a "quagmire" is all. Don't give up the goal, we need all the good people we can get.
Thank you :~D
That post ROCKED, Lady. Thank you for writing it. I have been loathe to come to FR as well because of all the vile attitudes being promulgated by some. Part of me wants to say its only a few, another part of me says its the interlopers/moles who liek to muddy up the site with really outrageous statements that play into the stereotype that people have of conservatives. I have a hard time believing that a conservative can have some of the views as they are put forth here, especially as uncharitable as those that want to hammer the poor themselves for what has happened to them. I am angry FOR them because of what the state has fostered, but not them. Even if they were guilty of being the worst sort of welfare queen, I would not wish what happened in NOLA during katrina, nor being stranded without care at teh Superdome for anything. How people can sit there and blame them for that is beyond me.
Thank you Hair!
Thanks Alkhin... :~D
It was this thread. Those 2 will be missed.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1481211/posts
Nice post!
The bigots are a dying breed... literally. Another generation, there won't be too many left.
The vast majority of Freepers are not bigots. Some of crafting the offending posts are doing it to one-up another in the ever-present joke game on Internet forums. Disgusting and immature as it is, it makes them feel superior not to the blacks, but to other Freepers.
Those that are truly vile racists are beneath our contempt and unworthy of a response. They will be facing St. Peter just as they judge others will be facing him and found wanting.
Thank you :~D
I disagree... I think they should be loudly denounced, lest anyone think we tolerate or condone it. Isn't this what we ask of the moderate muslim?
I am deeply saddened to hear mhking and rdb3 left the forum. I hope they understood that Katrina created an emotional rollercoaster ride that did not bring out the best in many, myself included. I had to take a few breaks from the forum to keep from going ballistic over a few issues.
The race-baiting brought out the worst in people. I hope mhking and rdb3 realize the baiting was a slap in the face to some here that were signing up to sponsor evacuees, volunteer at shelters, and giving their last dime to Red Cross. We should have risen above the baiting, but many took it personally and were not able to do so.
I hope the break that mhking and rdb3 are taking is just that... a break. After the emotions have died down most people will start thinking with their heads again to get to work to solve the problems that Katrina brought blazing to our television screens that many of us were blissfully unaware. I hope it's not too late for two members whose opinions have been much appreciated and will be missed.
The nasty attitudes and criminal behavior of *some* of the people we've seen in this thing are going to make it easier to cut - or at least limit the growth - of some mooch and sponge programs. That's a good thing. If you want to give them some of your $$$, fine with me...
As far as I know, the disaster of broken levys has been foreseen for 50 years at least. We personally knew of it some years ago when our son went to college in NO. I guess that one reason the local pols didn't act was because they couldn't believe it was really going to happen after all these years of luck, and because if you make a committment to inconvenience thousands of your constituents, and it turns out to be for nothing, you're in trouble politically. Still, there is a time when one must stand firm and damn the consequences. Anything eles is betrayal on more than one level. Which is what happened, IMO, betrayal.
I happen to like NO alot and look forward to its revival. It always seemed to me like half the city was kind of a ghetto, though. Not just one section either, it's more like there are some nice sections of town scattered through mostly poor areas. OTOH, my son, and many other college kids lived right in the bad sections of town, in shotgun shacks divided into apartments. They always got along fine with the black neighbors, even having them over for their frat parties (weirdly). Even the inhabitants at the bottom rung of the ladder can have humanity, although in many of them it's hard to find.
Not too many of us here on this forum really know what went on in NO after the storm passed through, but I don't think it was pretty. But I believe when government assumes responsibility for very much of the citizens' everday lives (which I don't think it should do, especially on a national level, because then the citizens themselves lose the habit of being responsible), then government has a responsibility to also be there for them when things go south. For whatever reason, when Katrina struck, government, unbelievably, left the folks least able to cope pretty much on their own.
I still have a Green Wave decal on my truck window, I can't figure out whether to leave it on to show support for the people of NO, or to take it off because some of the things that happened there the last 2 weeks that have been just awful.
I'm Leaving it on for now.
Thanks for this post. It's been distressing to see how this storm has really brought out the worst of us, as a nation and especially here on FR.
I ~thought~ 9/11 showed us how vulnerable we really are here on our home shores. Except for the shrill harpies on the left who will never be content, it brought out the best in us. It brought our our patriotism, we stood together.
But there we could be angry with a common enemy, the terrorists who had done this. It's hard to get (or at least stay) angry with a hurricane that no longer exists.
So in our frustration we have to seek someone to be responsible. And, unforunately whoever we hate or mistrust the most, is likely to fill that void.
No one is responsible ~for~ the hurricane. But we are all responsible for how we respond. There's plenty of blame to go around, with a healthy share of it belonging to the Mayor and the Governor.
I wish that more of our leaders would have the cojones to stand up and say "things went wrong, but we're gonna fix them" like the President did. It was a bold move. It was the right move.
As for FReepers, most here are good, solid people who will read and contemplate what you said. Then there are some bozos who will never get it. Unfortunately, they are often the loudest. And they drive some of our best and brightest away.
It's way too easy to get sucked into a flame war. And it's too easy to say stuff we'd never say in "public" because of the appearance of anonymity here. Well, ask NCPAC and Jeff Gannon about their anonymity.
I am sorry to see rdb3 and mhking go, as well as many others who have left or were banned (granted, some needed to go). But it's our loss, not theirs. We are less complete because they are gone.
I am not in favor of quietly tolerating any racists in our midst out of any fear of upsetting the tranquility of the forum. Don't treat them as valued members of any party I'm in. Clearly our president and the party he leads, agrees with me on this.
Thanks for your input guys :~D
I feel better for having posted it, and better about the kind of people who responded to it.
Very upsetting to see those guys leaving...it doesn't speak too well for this site. I understand well enough, though.
Their presence added alot.
Anyhow, I hope they will return
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