"I was stunned in New Orleans at how many black New Orleanians would tell me with real conviction that somehow the levee breaks had been engineered..."
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Name one. Just one. |
Posted on 09/18/2005 10:16:23 AM PDT by wagglebee
"Reasonable" African Americans in New Orleans believe that the Bush administration engineered the levee breaks during Hurricane Katrina in a bid to save the city's white sections by flooding black neighborhoods, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson said Sunday.
"I was stunned in New Orleans at how many black New Orleanians would tell me with real conviction that somehow the levee breaks had been engineered in order to save the French Quarter and the Garden District at the expense of the Lower Ninth Ward, which is almost all black," Robinson told NBC's "Meet the Press."
"These are not wild-eyed people," Robinson insisted. "These are reasonable, sober people who really believe that."
The levee break conspiracy theory parallels the plot outlined early last week by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
"I heard from a very reliable source who saw a 25 foot deep crater under the levee breach. It may have been blown up to destroy the black part of town and keep the white part dry," Farrakhan told a North Carolina audience.
The Washington Post columnist's report suggests that Farrakhan's poisonous theory appears to have gained currency.
Robinson said that while he doesn't believe the levee breaks were deliberately engineered, that fact that so many blacks do "tells you something about our racial divide in New Orleans."
Precisely
Robinson also had some rather stupid things to say about racism, how the hurricane had forced people to finally identify it, agree that it exists, confront it, talk about it etc. Here's my problem. Do we all want racism to go away? Well yes - except for Jesse Jackson and others like him who will be out of a job if they can no longer claim racism and thus extort big bucks out of corporations. So, if we all keep talking about racism (as Robinson suggests), how do we ever make it go away? Isn't the best way for racism to be made to disappear is for everyone to go colourblind - which by definition means that everyone must have stopped talking about it? I'm reminded of a decent politician a few years ago who was once asked to produce the numbers about how many blacks and people of ethnic origin that he have on staff (the motive being of course to embarrass him). His answer was classic "Our party would never do something so racist as to track figures like that." Isn't the correct answer to what YOU (whether you are a politician or not)are doing to help stamp out racism something along the lines of "I don't think about it, I don't talk about it, I don't let race enter into any decisions that I make - because I am colourblind with regards to race." If the answer is anything other than this, isn't that insuring that racism is perpetuated instead of hitting an end-of-the-line roadblock?
Correction:
A democrat can say practically anything with a semi-serious face and at least 30% of the population will be certain to believe it.
Yep. Again, the WashingtonComPost "reporting" what they wish was happening.
And, we know when he "asked" (if he did), he was actively fishing for a certain response. Just like that clown reporter from ABC.
So, when did you stop beating your wife?
Sure, but too many people benefit from the perception of government propagated racism for it to ever go away. And, yes, there still is racism. We can't ever make it go completely away, just like we can never get everyone to agree to anything. But, that's not the point. It's the perception that the government actively does things to the detriment of one race that is the biggest problem. As least as far as I can see.
But, your point is excellent.
susie
And a few "reasonable" Spaniards believed the world was flat before Columbus proved them wrong.
I have relatives in the state. Yes, many do believe that the levees were opened on purpose. However, they do not blame this on George Bush or the administration. They place the blame solely on the local administration also known at the democrats in power.
Once again the media is lying in an attempt to tarnish George Bush. They know that the only ones blaming him are the Louisiana democratic officials who have caused this mess. They hope the rest of the world does not find out about their lies.
Wait a minute... I thought last weeks complaint was that the Federal Government wasn't there...
They would have had to be there to "engineered the levee breaks", yet these same people were claiming they weren't there.
So which is it ????????????
They didn't ?!?
"I was stunned in New Orleans at how many black New Orleanians would tell me with real conviction that somehow the levee breaks had been engineered..."
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Name one. Just one. |
What about that rapper on the tv fund raiser who stated that Bush was sending military in to shoot black people?
Go figure. And this rather wide-spread ignorance couldn't have something to do with irresponsible media, who give air time to any kook who will denigrate liberal opponents, could it?
It just proves Honest Abe was right: "You can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time..." Or if you prefer to believe that was P.T. Barnum's wisdom, you might tack on, "There's a sucker born every minute!"
This "stuns" only Neanderthals like Robinson.
Ok, so why is that? I don't believe that GW Bush, FEMA, the Republican Party etc are or were doing anything of a racist nature - but as you say, it's the perception that they are. Perception by whom? If that is all that it is, then it occurs because lies are allowed to be told and thus flourish without being challenged. I maintain that outside of Sharpton and Jackson (and their ilk mostly black but with white media support), the forces to keep racism going are actually quite small. So why aren't reasonable and sober people exposing these monsters for what they are instead of doing a lot of head bobbing as if what they are saying is the truth? I tell ya why - because there are very few politicians that are prepared to take the risk that someone won't distort what they are saying and in the end it will backfire and be used to paint HIM/HER as the racist. It takes courage to present the truth some times - but since few are presenting it, we are witnessing the actions of a lot of cowards and thus the status quo will continue.
In my view, I think that racism and true racist actions are actually a much smaller problem than most people make them out to be. I came home from work the other day and my son and his friends were playing cards on the living room floor - one Chinese, one Jew, one half Chinese/half German, one black, one East European, and one Taiwanese. In my travels, it is frankly rare that I encounter attitudes that are racist in tone and I travel quite widely (if anything, the worst offending comments seem to be blacks on whites). The bigger problem are the lies that the left are telling about it in order to make it seem much bigger and more important than it really is because they are so desperate to keep racism alive and well. It's not racism that needs to be confronted, it's the lies told by those with a disingenuous agenda.
Looks they are onto Gov. "Whitey" Blanco's scheme.
Could not agree with you more. The only thing I would add is that it probably depends upon where you are whether or not you see overt racism. When I first moved to E. TX I was surprised at how many people used the dreaded N word (and not in a hip hop way) in public. It was foreign to me to hear it said out loud like that. Of course, I would not say that most people I knew there were particularly racist, but there was a small contingent who were pretty overt in their belief system.
But, I didnt' see anything particular in the school system that held black children back. I just mean to say that there are still pockets of people who are raised to believe that they are better than someone else because of the color of their skin. And I also agree that this attitude is probably much more prevelent in the black community, especially the younger kids.
Death
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