Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Comparing New Orleans to the Midwest

To refute anyone who claims racial prejudices no longer exist, I need only dig into my email inbox for a few choice forwarded messages. Here's one that makes an argument also made by Rush Limbaugh:
Just a personal observation...as I watched the news coverage of the massive flooding in the Midwest with over 100 blocks of the city of Cedar Rapids, Iowa under water, levees breaking, and the attention now turned downstream for when this massive amount of water hits the Mississippi, what amazed me is not what we saw, but what we didn't see...
  1. We don't see looting.
  2. We don't see street violence.
  3. We don't see people sitting on their rooftops waiting for the government to come and save them.
  4. We don't see people waiting on the government to do anything.
  5. We don't see Hollywood organizing benefits to raise money for people to rebuild.
  6. We don't see people blaming President Bush.
  7. We don't see people ignoring evacuation orders.
  8. We don't see people blaming a government conspiracy to blow up the levees as the reason some have not held.
  9. We don't see the US Senators or the Governor of Iowa crying on TV.
  10. We don't see the Mayors of any of these cities complaining about the lack of state or federal response.
  11. We don't see or hear reports of the police going around confiscating personal firearms so only the criminal will be armed.
  12. We don't see gangs of people going around and randomly shooting at the rescue workers.
  13. You don't see some leaders in this country blaming the bad behavior of the Iowa flood victims on "society" (of course there are no wide spread reports of
    lawlessness to require excuses).

Re: Iowa vs. Louisiana:

Where are all of the Hollywood celebrities holding telethons asking for help in restoring Iowa and helping the folks affected by the floods?

Where is all the media asking the tough questions about why the federal government hasn't solved the problem? Asking where the FEMA trucks (and trailers) are?

Why isn't the Federal Government relocating Iowa people to free hotels in Chicago?

When will Spike Lee say that the Federal Government blew up the levees that failed in Des Moines?

Where are Sean Penn and the Dixie Chicks?

Where are all the looters stealing high-end tennis shoes and bigscreen television sets?

When will we hear Governor Chet Culver say that he wants to rebuild a "vanilla" Iowa, because that's the way God wants it?

Where is the hysterical 24/7 media coverage complete with reports of cannibalism?

Where are the people declaring that George Bush hates white, rural people?

How come in 2 weeks, you will never hear about the Iowa flooding ever again?

There are the obvious points that a Category 4 hurricane is different from slowly rising river waters, that there are many more escape routes out of the Midwest, and that governments may have learned something from Katrina. But I'll refer you to Tim Wise for a full explanation why this is an inappropriate comparison and the wrong conclusions are being drawn from it.

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