Posted on 12/15/2005 6:24:49 AM PST by oxcart
Statistics released by the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals suggest that fewer than half of the victims of Hurricane Katrina were black, and that whites died at the highest rate of all races in New Orleans.
Liberals in the aftermath of the storm were quick to allege that the Bush administration delayed its response to the catastrophe because most of the victims were black.
Damu Smith, founder of the National Black Environmental Justice Network, in September said that the federal government "ignored us, they forgot about us ... because we look like we look."
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan in October said that the Federal Emergency Management Agency wasn't fit to help the storm's victims because "there are not enough blacks high up in FEMA" and added that, "certainly the Red Cross is the same."
Rapper Kanye West used his time on NBC's telethon for the hurricane victims to charge that, "George Bush doesn't care about black people."
But the state's demographic information suggests that whites in New Orleans died at a higher rate than minorities. According to the 2000 census, whites make up 28 percent of the city's population, but the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals indicates that whites constitute 36.6 percent of the storm's fatalities in the city.
African-Americans make up 67.25 percent of the population and 59.1 percent of the deceased. Other minorities constitute approximately 5 percent of the population and represented 4.3 percent of the storm's fatalities.
Overall for the state, 658 bodies have been identified. Forty-seven percent were African-American and 42 percent were Caucasian. The remaining bodies were either non-black minorities or undetermined.
An additional 247 victims have not been identified, so their demographic information has not been released.
The data showed that the majority of Katrina's victims lived in the Orleans parish. The nearby St. Bernard and Jefferson parishes had 91 and 25 victims, respectively.
The storm also did not discriminate based on gender. Fifty percent of the victims were male and 49 percent were female, with 1 percent being undetermined.
Calls requesting comment from Damu Smith and the Nation of Islam were not returned Wednesday.
The headline is a lie. If more whites than blacks died in a city that has so many more black people, race was certainly a factor.
No, you won't. While it isn't exactly scientific, I do know that most of the rescues we watched on the news were rescues of black people, very few whites.
"speciesism"
LOL, I will file that one away to use another day.
The cannibals must have really been hungry.
That's a lot of ism's!
Maybe the victims were predominately democrats. Yeah that's it. Bush hates democrats.
/necessary?
This is the sort of info that will rise to the surface as the Katrina
episode gets a real investigation.
I was caught unawares when the head of the American Red Cross resigned
this week...I hadn't heard a thing about the Red Cross being
judged as too slow at responding to the Katrina disaster.
All I heard from the press was that the suffering was all "Bush's fault".
Anyone with an ounce of brain matter knows that race wasnt a factor , just as we know George Bush didnt dynamite the Levees.
Now what does that say for those who say otherwise?
I guess I had better answer: They are people who are using their race card to play upon the ignorant and hope to make money or political credits by making false accusation. In other words: Lying sacks of crap .
Don't hold anything back.
The sad if not tragic thing is that the report was even given credence at all. The truth is that in New Orleans and other areas of that state, the First Responders and Governor Blanco’s lack of leadership left the citizens in that city in a quandary and Mayor Nagin hiding in a bunker somewhere made the meltdown complete. The MSM did the cover-up of ineptness of the afore mentioned long enough for all the nuts, flakes and fruits to come out of the wood work and join in with erroneous if not stupid ‘findings’, joining the muddy waters from Lake Pontchartrain to complete Katrina’s devastating work. The leader of the House of Islam is a false prophet who is certifiably insane.
"Statistics Suggest Race Not a Factor in Katrina Deaths "
Last I checked, when lungs fill with water, the human body dies, regardless of skin color.
"The truth is that in New Orleans and other areas of that state, the First Responders and Governor Blanco’s lack of leadership left the citizens in that city in a quandary and Mayor Nagin hiding in a bunker somewhere made the meltdown complete."
It is clear you have no understanding of incident command. Getting your leadership and all the first responders killed in the first hours of an incident is not the way to handle a disaster. This is one of the major lessons learned from 9-11.
Since I didn't see you anywhere around during Hurricane Katrina, I'll assume you have no idea what actually took place. All you know was the crap that was being served up on MSM, which was very far from the truth. Like looking at the world through a keyhole. If you want to understand what took place on the gulf and what is going on today, you must go there and see it for yourself and talk to the people who lived through it. What you are seeing in the media is a gross distortion of the truth.
A large number of the white people in New Orleans were elderly. Knowing what their chances were in the Superdome, being white and elderly, these people chose to ride out the storm at home vs the hell that awaited them in the dome. Many of them died. For the most part the black population that could not evacuate went to the dome. And while they were uncomfortable, they lived.
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