← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Walter Yannis
Thread ID: 19939 | Posts: 11 | Started: 2005-09-02
2005-09-02 08:40 | User Profile
[URL=http://www.slate.com/id/2124688/]Slate[/URL] Lost in the Flood Why no mention of race or class in TV's Katrina coverage? By Jack Shafer Posted Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2005, at 4:22 PM PT
I can't say I saw everything that the TV newscasters pumped out about Katrina, but I viewed enough repeated segments to say with 90 percent confidence that broadcasters covering the New Orleans end of the disaster demurred from mentioning two topics that must have occurred to every sentient viewer: race and class.
Nearly every rescued person, temporary resident of the Superdome, looter, or loiterer on the high ground of the freeway I saw on TV was African-American. And from the look of it, they weren't wealthy residents of the Garden District. This storm appears to have hurt blacks more directly than whites, but the broadcasters scarcely mentioned that fact.
Now, don't get me wrong. Just because 67 percent of New Orleans residents are black, I don't expect CNN to rename the storm "Hurricane" Carter in honor of the black boxer. Just because Katrina's next stop after destroying coastal Mississippi was counties that are 25 percent to 86 percent African-American (according to this U.S. Census map), and 27.9 percent of New Orleans residents are below the poverty line, I don't expect the Rev. Jesse Jackson to call the news channels to give a comment. But in the their frenzy to beat freshness into the endless loops of disaster footage that have been running all day, broadcasters might have mentioned that nearly all the visible people left behind in New Orleans are of the black persuasion, and mostly poor.
To be sure, some reporters sidled up to the race and class issue. I heard them ask the storm's New Orleans victims why they hadn't left town when the evacuation call came. Many said they were brokeââ¬â"I live from paycheck to paycheck," explained one woman. Others said they didn't own a car with which to escape and that they hadn't understood the importance of evacuation.
But I don't recall any reporter exploring the class issue directly by getting a paycheck-to-paycheck victim to explain that he couldn't risk leaving because if he lost his furniture and appliances, his pots and pans, his bedding and clothes, to Katrina or looters, he'd have no way to replace them. No insurance, no stable, large extended family that could lend him cash to get back on his feet, no middle-class job to return to after the storm.
What accounts for the broadcasters' timidity? I saw only a couple of black faces anchoring or co-anchoring but didn't see any black faces reporting from New Orleans. So, it's safe to assume that the reluctance to talk about race on the air was a mostly white thing. That would tend to imply that white people don't enjoy discussing the subject. But they do, as long as they get to call another white person racist.
My guess is that Caucasian broadcasters refrain from extemporizing about race on the air mostly because they fear having an Al Campanis moment. Campanis, you may recall, was the Los Angeles Dodgers vice president who brought his career to an end when he appeared on Nightline in 1987 and explained to Ted Koppel that blacks might not have "some of the necessities" it takes to manage a major league team or run it as a general manager for the same reason black people aren't "good swimmers." They lack "buoyancy," he said.
Not to excuse Campanis, but as racists go he was an underachiever. While playing in the minor leagues, he threw down his mitt and challenged another player who was bullying Jackie Robinson. As Dodger GM, he aggressively signed black and Latino players, treated them well, and earned their admiration. Although his Nightline statement was transparently racist, in the furor that followed, nobody could cite another racist remark he had ever made. His racism, which surely blocked blacks from potential front-office Dodger careers, was the racism of overwhelming ignoranceââ¬âa trait he shared (shares?) with many other baseball executives.
This sort of latent racism (or something more potent) may lurk in the hearts of many white people who end up on TV, as it does in the hearts of many who watch. Or, even if they're completely clean of racism's taint, anchors and reporters fear that they'll suffer a career-stopping Campanis moment by blurting something poorly thought out or something that gets misconstrued. Better, most think, to avoid discussing race at all unless someone with impeccable race credentials appears to superviseââ¬âand indemnifyââ¬âeverybody from potentially damaging charges of racism.
Race remains largely untouchable for TV because broadcasters sense that they can't make an error without destroying careers. That's a true pity. If the subject were a little less taboo, one of last night's anchors could have asked a reporter, "Can you explain to our viewers, who by now have surely noticed, why 99 percent of the New Orleans evacuees we're seeing are African-American? I suppose our viewers have noticed, too, that the provocative looting footage we're airing and re-airing seems to depict mostly African-Americans."
If the reporter on the ground couldn't answer the questions, a researcher could have Nexised the New Orleans Times-Picayune five-parter from 2002, "Washing Away," which reported that the city's 100,000 residents without private transportation were likely to be stranded by a big storm. In other words, what's happening is what was expected to happen: The poor didn't get out in time.
To the question of looting, an informed reporter or anchor might have pointed out that anybodyââ¬âeven one of the 500 Nordic blondes working in broadcast newsââ¬âwould loot food from a shuttered shop if they found themselves trapped by a flood and had no idea when help would come. However sympathetic I might be to people liberating necessities during a disaster in order to survive, I can't muster the same tolerance for those caught on camera helping themselves in a leisurely fashion to dry goods at Wal-Mart. Those people weren't looting as much as they were shopping for good stuff to steal. MSNBC's anchor Rita Cosby, who blurted an outraged if inarticulate harrumph when she aired the Wal-Mart heist footage, deserves more respect than the broadcasters who gave the tape the sort of nonjudgmental commentary they might deliver if they were watching the perps vacuum the carpets at home.
When disaster strikes, Americansââ¬âespecially journalistsââ¬âlike to pretend that no matter who gets hit, no matter what race, color, creed, or socioeconomic level they hail from, we're all in it together. This spirit informs the 1997 disaster flick Volcano, in which a "can't we all just get along" moment arrives at the film's end: Volcanic ash covers every face in the big crowd scene, and everybody realizes that we're all members of one united race.
But we aren't one united race, we aren't one united class, and Katrina didn't hit all folks equally. By failing to acknowledge upfront that black New Orleaniansââ¬âand perhaps black Mississippiansââ¬âsuffered more from Katrina than whites, the TV talkers may escape potential accusations that they're racist. But by ignoring race and class, they boot the journalistic opportunity to bring attention to the disenfranchisement of a whole definable segment of the population. What I wouldn't pay to hear a Fox anchor ask, "Say, Bob, why are these African-Americans so poor to begin with?"
Note to Al Campanis' departed soul: Al, if you had endowed a foundation to build a 50-meter pool in an urban neighborhood and hired some good coaches, I bet that pool would have spawned Olympic-caliber swimmers. Send your Katrina nuggets to [email]slate.pressbox@gmail.com[/email]. (E-mail may be quoted unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)
Jack Shafer is Slate's editor at large.
2005-09-02 08:55 | User Profile
[QUOTE]My guess is that Caucasian broadcasters refrain from extemporizing about race on the air mostly because they fear having an Al Campanis moment. Campanis, you may recall, was the Los Angeles Dodgers vice president who brought his career to an end when he appeared on Nightline in 1987 and explained to Ted Koppel that blacks might not have "some of the necessities" it takes to manage a major league team or run it as a general manager for the same reason black people aren't "good swimmers." They lack "buoyancy," he said.[/QUOTE]
Of course this is what it is. They have to be, or more correctly, pretend to be, "color blind" so the average idiot viewer may be also. They don't want you to see the looters,etc as "black people", but just "people." Equal, in every way, to the white viewer. However, pictures are worth a thousand words.
2005-09-02 09:11 | User Profile
Shafer is just an enterprising opportunist. By God, nobody's gonna leapfrog over HIM to be the first to the feeding trough at what is sure to be the next big I Am Not A Racist orgy of self-congratulation for "enlightened" whites.
Poor people die in the wake of natural disasters. That means poor whites, too. If Shafer were honest, he'd have noted that while [I]nearly [/I] all the stranded were black, [B]all [/B] the violent looters were.
These feel-bad stories that the white media regularly cycles out, gigo-style, always promote one disgusting - but popular - lie: that whites who avoid disaster are - of course - "rich"!; while carefully sidestepping other uncomfortable truths. Such as who in their right mind would, or could justify, paying kitchen help or building security $75,000 a year? Why are blacks the only race/ethnicity to never police their own communities or value education....indeed, they reject such notions as "acting white"? Or that those blacks who [I]chose [/I] school over crack and drive-bys and [I]made [/I] a decent living for themselves all got out of Dodge along with the whites, and didn't bother to load up their vehicles with total - and dangerous - strangers? Or that the hundreds of unarmed volunteers selflessly risking life and limb to ameliorate the misery in whatever pitifully small measure possible are all whites. Or that wages are on average so low in the area, and white-collar jobs so scarce, that most of those departing whites are also living paycheck to paycheck? Why else do you think so many Southern whites are IN the military?
What's the reason Jack Shafer gets to write stories for Slate, and not some poor black who's barely literate and incapable of forming grammatical sentences? Because, frankly, [I]that [/I] is one area of endeavor in which wholesale race-replacement would not negatively impact society [U]in the least[/U]. One self-serving, finger-pointing bullshit artist is as good as another, of any color.
2005-09-02 16:38 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]What I wouldn't pay to hear a Fox anchor ask, "Say, Bob, why are these African-Americans so poor to begin with?" And God help the poor soul who gave any other answer than "racism." Mr. Phelps is like the Red Guard, machine gun in hand, wondering why people are afraid to speak up.
2005-09-02 16:43 | User Profile
Most of these darkies you are seeing on TV probably have an IQ or 70 - 80...
2005-09-02 16:48 | User Profile
OK, we have the "don't feed the wild animals" rule. It's time to apply it to the darkies -- feeding them is only causing the few natural abilities for self-reliance and survival that they had to atrophy. Plus they get used to humans and don't fear human company anymore.
2005-09-02 16:58 | User Profile
washingtonpost.com 'To Me, It Just Seems Like Black People Are Marked'
By Wil Haygood Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, September 2, 2005; A01
BATON ROUGE, La., Sept. 1 -- It seemed a desperate echo of a bygone era, a mass of desperate-looking black folk on the run in the Deep South. Some without shoes.
It was high noon Thursday at a rest stop on the edge of Baton Rouge when several buses pulled in, fresh from the calamity of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
Hundreds piled out, dragging themselves as if floating through some kind of thick liquid. They were exhausted, some crying.
"It was like going to hell and back," said Bernadette Washington, 38, a black homemaker from Orleans Parish who had slept under a bridge the night before with her five children and her husband. She sighed the familiar refrain, stinging as an old-time blues note: "All I have is the clothes on my back. And I been sleeping in them for three days."
While hundreds of thousands of people have been dislocated by Hurricane Katrina, the images that have filled the television screens have been mainly of black Americans -- grieving, suffering, in some cases looting and desperately trying to leave New Orleans. Along with the intimate tales of family drama and survival being played out Thursday, there was no escaping that race had become a subtext to the unfolding drama of the hurricane's aftermath.
"To me," said Bernadette Washington, "it just seems like black people are marked. We have so many troubles and problems."
"After this," her husband, Brian Thomas, said, "I want to move my family to California."
He was holding his 2-year-old, Qadriyyah, in his left arm. On Thomas's right hand was a crude bandage. He had pushed the hand through a bedroom window on the night of the hurricane to get to one of his children.
"He had meat hanging off his hand," his wife said. They live -- lived -- on Bunker Hill Road in Orleans Parish, a mostly black section of New Orleans.
When the hurricane hit, Thomas, a truck driver, said he came home from work, looked at every one of the people he loves, and stood in the middle of the living room. Thinking. He's the Socrates in the family -- but time was running out.
"I only got a five-passenger car," he said.
"Chevy Cavalier," said his wife.
"And," Thomas continued, "I stood there, thinking. I said, 'Okay, it's 50-50 if the water will get through.' "
Within hours the water rose, and it kept rising.
"But then I said, 'If we do take the car, some of us would be sitting on one another's laps.' And the state troopers were talking about making arrests."
Instead, he pushed the kids out a window. They scooted to the roof, some pulling themselves up with an extension cord.
"The rain was pouring down so hard," Washington said. "And we had a 3-month-old and a 2-year-old."
The 3-month-old, Nadirah, was sleeping in her mother's arms. "All I had was water to give her," said Washington, her voice breaking, her other children sitting on the concrete putting talcum power inside their soaked sneakers. "She's premature," she went on, about the 3-month-old. "She came May 22. Was supposed to be here July 11. I had her early because I have high blood pressure. Had to have her by C-section."
Bernadette Washington was suddenly worried about her blood pressure medicine. She reached inside her purse. "Look," she said. "All the pills are stuck together."
Both parents had been thinking about the hurricane, the aftermath, the looting, the politicians who might come to Louisiana and who might not. And their own holding-on lives, now jangly like bedsprings suddenly snapped.
"It says there'll come a time you can't hide. I'm talking about people. From each other," Bernadette Washington said.
Thomas, the philosopher, waved his bandaged hand. He had a theory: "God's angry with New Orleans. It's an evil city. The worst school system anywhere. Rampant crime. Corrupt politicians. Here, baby, have a potato chip for daddy."
The 2-year-old, Qadriyyah, took a chip from her daddy and gobbled it up. Her face was covered with mosquito bites. But she smiled just to be in daddy's arms.
Thomas continued: "A predominantly black city -- and they're killing each other. God had to get their attention with a calamity. New Orleans ain't seen an earthquake yet. You can get away from a hurricane but not an earthquake. Next time, nobody may get out."
In the middle of the storm, little Ernest Washington, 9, had grown into a hero.
Washington and Thomas consider Ernest, Bernadette's nephew, their own now. They adopted him after his mother, Donna Marie Washington, died not long ago of AIDS.
"She was a runaway," said Washington, able to sound sorrowful for the child even in her current straits. "She had run away when she was 14. We don't know how she got the AIDS."
While Thomas was figuring his family's fate that first night, little Ernest bolted to the rooftop.
He had fashioned a white flag on a piece of stick, and began waving. "That is one courageous boy," Thomas said.
A helicopter passed them by. A National Guard unit passed them by.
"Black National Guard unit, too," piped in Warren Carter, Washington's brother-in-law.
In the South, the issue of race -- black, white -- always seems as ready to come rolling off the tongue as a summer whistle. A black Guard unit, passing them by. Something Carter won't soon forget.
Before long the whole family, watching the water rise, made it to the roof. Three men in a boat -- "two black guys and an Arab," Washington said -- rode by and left some food on the roof of a van parked nearby. Ernest went and retrieved the food.
"A little hustler he is," Thomas said.
"Child [is] something else," Washington said.
It took two days for a helicopter to fetch them. They were delivered not to some kind of shelter, but to a patch of land beneath a freeway.
"I thought we were going to die out there," Bernadette Washington said. "We had to sleep on the ground. Use the bathroom in front of each other. Laying on that ground, I just couldn't take it. I felt like Job."
Then, somehow, a bus, and then Baton Rouge. At that moment, a lady -- white -- came by the rest stop and handed her some baby items.
"Bless you," Washington said.
That exchange forced something from Warren Carter: "White man came up to me little while ago and offered me some money. I said thank you, but no thanks. I got money to hold us over. But it does go to show you that racism ain't everywhere."
Under the hot sun, Brian Thomas was staring into an expanse of open air. They expected another relative to arrive soon and assist them in continuing their exodus. é 2005 The Washington Post Company
2005-09-02 16:59 | User Profile
50-50?
nice guess work Socrates
2005-09-02 17:01 | User Profile
[QUOTE=H.A.L.2006]50-50?
nice guess work Socrates[/QUOTE] Niggers, it figures.
2005-09-02 17:48 | User Profile
Blacks + blackout = ?
The water is probably putting a damper of violence, making it easier to deal with New Orleans.
2005-09-03 05:21 | User Profile
I just saw Jesse Jackson say on CNN that race was a factor in FEMA's lethargic response to the plight of the people in the convention center.