An American tragedy in black and white
By Michael M. Bates (09/07/05)
In addition to destroying yet uncounted lives and homes, Hurricane Katrina ripped off part of the thin veneer covering the enormous chasm between blacks and whites in our country. I’m speaking here not of a gap in income, but of the starkly different ways we view what’s happening.
The catastrophe initially was reported with little reference to race. Even though viewers saw that the overwhelming majority of folks caught in the disaster were minorities, I heard few mentions of it.
Then it changed. Race became a prominent part of the story.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer noted that “so many of these people, almost all of them that we see, are so poor and they are so black. . .”
A well-known rapper claimed on NBC’s concert fundraiser that George Bush doesn’t care about blacks. Not just that, but “they’ve given them permission to go down and shoot us!”
Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton asserted that race played a major role in what they view as a delayed federal response.
There was criticism of TV coverage of the disaster. Why was the term “refugees’ used to describe those leaving the flooded areas? Were the media being racist by highlighting stories of looting and shootings?
Then there were other questions. Why did so many people apparently opt not to leave New Orleans? We’re told it’s because they didn’t have access to cars or enough money to leave. No doubt that’s true in some instances, but in so very many?
Why didn’t the city or state use the hundreds of available school buses to transport citizens away from the storm?
Why did the mayor and Louisiana’s governor dawdle in issuing mandatory evacuation orders and only after calls from the President and the national hurricane director? Why didn’t the governor send out the National Guard to maintain order?
Breaking into stores for food, water and other essentials is one thing. Carting out televisions, DVD players and other items is another. And weren’t rescue efforts delayed by workers getting shot at?
Blacks and whites – make that many blacks and many whites – see these matters differently. No civil rights legislation will change that. No hope for equality. No diversity training. It’s simply the way things are and have been.
O.J. Simpson wasn’t guilty of murder in the eyes of most black Americans. A majority of white people thought he was.
One 1999 national poll found that only ten percent of whites believe blacks are treated less fairly on the job. Yet 47 percent of blacks see it that way. The gap of 37 percent underscores a great racial divide.
So does an analysis done a year earlier. In it, more than one out of four black Americans said they’d been treated unfairly while shopping within the previous 30 days.
Needless to say, this old guy isn’t the official spokesman for whites. But I’d be surprised if most of us would guess that anywhere close to a quarter of black shoppers are treated unjustly with that frequency. How could we be so unaware?
Earlier this year, almost half of all American blacks surveyed expressed the view that AIDS is a man-made affliction. Fifteen percent feel that the disease is a form of genocide designed to kill blacks and close to that percentage say the Central Intelligence Agency is spreading it.
Other than possibly Michael Moore fans and students and faculty on college campuses, how many whites believe that?
Even more disheartening is the realization that Americans of all colors are less optimistic about the direction in which we’re going.
In 1963, when the civil rights movement was in its early years, more than half our citizens thought that racial problems would eventually be worked out in the United States. A quarter of a century later, that figure had dropped to just over 40 percent.
It seems we’re drifting even further apart. As a small-time pundit who has a suggested solution for practically everything, I’m at a loss. Where in the world do people who have such divergent outlooks even begin to find common ground?
Recovering from Katrina will take a very long time. Sadly, overcoming the gap between whites and blacks, if it’s possible, is going to take a lot longer.
This appears in the September 8, 2005 Oak Lawn (IL) Reporter.
(Printer friendly version) Email: Michael M. Bates
