Posted on 09/16/2005 5:47:38 AM PDT by yoe
If the government’s failure to get help instantly to Katrina victims reflects American racism, why have the images of thousands of poor, displaced blacks triggered the greatest outpouring of charity in American history?p
As the poisonous racial demagoguery in Katrina’s wake continues unabated, Americans are daily disproving its central claim. Carol Moseley Braun, the scandal-plagued former senator from Illinois, has delivered one of the latest entries in the racism-made-them-not-do-it field. Writing in the International Herald Tribune, Braun compares the government’s Katrina response to anti-black lynching riots during Reconstruction. “Those who survive [Katrina] will have stories no less chilling than the stories passed down the generations from survivors who fled the night riders in the late 1800s”—in other words, New Orleans blacks waiting for evacuation were subjected to malicious massacre by the authorities. To be sure, there was horrific violence in the flood’s aftermath, but it wasn’t perpetrated by public officials or relief workers.
News outlets and pundits the world over—from the Washington Post to Al Jazeera—have gleefully portrayed the Katrina suffering as the product of what Braun calls “America’s original sin—racism.” Yet for racial sinners, Americans are sure behaving strangely. As of September 11, they had donated at least $788 million to Katrina charities, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy—an unprecedented pace of giving, easily topping the post-9/11 and tsunami giving. “It’s overwhelming,” Sarah Marchetti, a spokeswoman for the Red Cross, told the Chronicle. “People are just pouring their hearts out, and making a donation is an expression of that.” The gifts are coming in from every part of the country, from corporations, radio stations, foundations, churches, blogs, and hospitals.
While the race-mongers try to stoke blacks’ suspicion of whites, the public is showing that it regards all Americans, whatever their color or economic situation, as brothers and sisters. That people are giving so feverishly in spite of the competing images of looting by the flood victims and the reports of murder and rape is even stronger proof that racism has lost its grip on the American mind: the givers are refusing the bigot’s reaction of impugning an entire race by the loathsome behavior of a few.
The unstoppable charity towards New Orleans’s largely black survivors is so massive that even the racial demagogues cannot completely ignore it. Braun acknowledges that “the heart of the people has been touched by this tragedy in ways unknown a century ago.” So Braun is forced into an untenable distinction: the government is racist, but the people are not. This is quite a turnaround for the political and cultural elites. They have always looked to the government to protect blacks from the redneck American public’s racism—through the imposition of racial quotas in hiring, contracting, and college admissions, among other endeavors. Now it turns out that the public doesn’t need all that mandated affirmative discrimination: they see blacks as fellow human beings, not as some inferior “Other.”
Braun’s tortured distinction between a prejudiced government and a charitable people is, of course, absurd: if the public is color-blind in its compassion, its elected representatives will be, too. She offers no theory for why public officials would have held onto race prejudice while the public discarded it.
The racial victocrats and left-wing agitators won’t change their behavior after the Katrina charity outpouring, but opponents of “benign” racial discrimination will have new weapons against it. When the New York Times and other mouthpieces of the elite media blame racism for segregated housing patterns, one might ask why so many allegedly bigoted Americans volunteered to take welfare mothers and their children into their homes. When the allegedly evil Wal-Mart is accused of exploiting the working class, one might ask why it opened up its warehouses and unleashed its manpower as no other corporation has done to help the homeless. When the lack of black proportional representation in technical professions is chalked up to a cartel of discriminating employers, one might query where all those black-rejecting bigots were hiding, as businesses across the country showered job offers on the black poor. And as the Bush-hating Democrats and other political opportunists call for new government welfare programs to assist the victims of American color hatred, just savor their shameless hypocrisy in simultaneously bashing the government for its racism and calling on its sovereign power to force “racial justice” on the public.
Biting the hand that feeds them, as usual.
--Booker T. Washington, 1911
Ms Braun is but one example.
She is another example of sending the worse and the dumbest instead of the best and the brightest to represent the people.
Whether Liberals know it or not, they are caricatures of themselves.
Jessie Jackass is the love child of the hate America first crowd.
"There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well."
--Booker T. Washington, 1911
***
Truer words were never spoken. I have long though that the two so-called Reverends -- Jackson and Sharpton -- keep bringing up allegations of racism (true or not) simply because if they didn't, neither of them would be gainfully employed for long. This is how they make their living, posing in front of cameras and hurling unfounded accusations.
If they had the interests of "their people" at heart, why weren't they in NO or Biloxi or Gulfport or any of the other areas hard hit by Katrina -- to do some real work helping the desolate people? I didn't see either of them in the disaster areas handing out food, shoveling out the mess or doing anything meaningful to help out. Afraid to get their hands dirty?
It is all about THEM hating the fact that they aren't in POWER anymore. That is what it's all about. Nothing more, nothing less.
Oh, how true.
Carol Mostly Fraud is the the perfect example of, "you don't need a reason when you have an ideology"!
Then let them deny it.
News reporter: "Miss Streisand, it's been widely reported that you have offered the use of your home for displaced storm victims. How many New Orleans residents do you figure to put up in that California estate of yours?
Barbara Streisand: "Wha-wha-wha-WHATTTTTTTTTTT!!!???? Poor people, in MY house? On MY spotless white carpets and furniture? NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO"
It used to be that a charge of racism was a dart which always hit its intended target. The recipient would swiftly and permanently suffer the stigma without being able to defend himself. There is now so much evidence to the contrary that the charge itself is beginning to boomerang on the dart thrower, IMHO.
Why isn't she in jail ?
Carolyn
Posted by Peach to saveliberty; Tony Snow
On News/Activism 09/16/2005 9:32:53 AM EDT · 105 of 105
For those interested, this is the most comprehensive analysis of what happened in New Orleans and a timeline.
I've been close attention to this matter, as a lot of us have, and there is a lot of information in here that I did not know.
It also explains, specifically, why the feds were PROHIBITED by law, from acting in New Orleans, until the Governor signed a specific request for help.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1485619/posts
What a great, and perfectly accurage quote from Booker T. Thanks for posting.
Oh, but it WAS racism that was the cause of all this misery. The racism that says "You'll never be able to handle life in this country without the government giving you all the basics." This fostered the mindset of dependence on the government and the support of a political party that pushes this ideology and overlooks all manner of corruption in order to acquire and maintain power. In plantation times, this racism was well-represented in the phrase "We treat our darkies GOOD."
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