The right-wing fraud about race and Katrina
Earlier this month, right-wing pundit John Leo -- columnist for U.S News and World Report, syndicated to newspapers nation-wide -- wrote a piece that would be forgettable if it didn't echo a growing sentiment on the right about Hurricane Katrina and issues of race in America.
In short, the new conservative line is this: all the talk about how Hurricane Katrina hurt African-Americans is wrong, and is just another example of black folks and progressives playing "the race card."
Leo's editorial is a perfect case study of the right's new approach, showing at once how dangerous and utterly flawed it is.
In his January 9 Op Ed, Leo blames the mainstream media for "strumming the racial theme ... relentlessly in the absence of actual information," with statements such as Wolf Blitzer's claim that the Hurricane's victims were "so poor, so black."
Leo also goes after "Racial agitators and entertainers," such as activist and author Randall Robinson's apparently outrageous claim that Katrina constituted a "defining watershed moment in America's racial history" (gasp!).
All of these statements, Leo claims, are wrong. Why? Because, according to a December 18 news story in the Los Angeles Times he cites, "The bodies of New Orleans residents killed by Hurricane Katrina were almost as likely to be recovered from middle-class neighborhoods as from the city’s poorer districts."
Using that evidence -- and that alone -- Leo dismisses any claim that the impact of Katrina was in any way related to race. Dozens of newspapers took the bait and printed his editorial, to the delight of the right-wing blogosphere.
Let's break down just how ridiculous this is.
First: does a person have to be dead to be a victim? Only 2 of the 11 "agitators" Leo quotes say anything about African-Americans being killed, and none are quoted as believing they were killed disproportionately.
Second, did you notice that Leo's quote from the LA Times never mentions race? Read the story's lead again:
In fact, Leo goes to great lengths to ignore the one paragraph that does talk about race, the only one which would be relevant to his Op Ed. After noting that only 380 bodies could be identified by race, the Times noted:
So there you have it -- an entire right-wing narrative about race and Katrina, publicized in media outlets around the country, that is based on 1) a false interpretation of 2) an old and 3) small study that 4) never mentions race, except 5) one paragraph which proves Leo wrong, and 6) only focuses on deaths, not people impacted in other ways.
Pretty astounding, even by right-wing attack media standards.
Fortunately, there was an excellent, updated, and in-depth report that came out this week that sets the story straight:
In short, the new conservative line is this: all the talk about how Hurricane Katrina hurt African-Americans is wrong, and is just another example of black folks and progressives playing "the race card."
Leo's editorial is a perfect case study of the right's new approach, showing at once how dangerous and utterly flawed it is.
In his January 9 Op Ed, Leo blames the mainstream media for "strumming the racial theme ... relentlessly in the absence of actual information," with statements such as Wolf Blitzer's claim that the Hurricane's victims were "so poor, so black."
Leo also goes after "Racial agitators and entertainers," such as activist and author Randall Robinson's apparently outrageous claim that Katrina constituted a "defining watershed moment in America's racial history" (gasp!).
All of these statements, Leo claims, are wrong. Why? Because, according to a December 18 news story in the Los Angeles Times he cites, "The bodies of New Orleans residents killed by Hurricane Katrina were almost as likely to be recovered from middle-class neighborhoods as from the city’s poorer districts."
Using that evidence -- and that alone -- Leo dismisses any claim that the impact of Katrina was in any way related to race. Dozens of newspapers took the bait and printed his editorial, to the delight of the right-wing blogosphere.
Let's break down just how ridiculous this is.
First: does a person have to be dead to be a victim? Only 2 of the 11 "agitators" Leo quotes say anything about African-Americans being killed, and none are quoted as believing they were killed disproportionately.
Second, did you notice that Leo's quote from the LA Times never mentions race? Read the story's lead again:
The bodies of New Orleans residents killed by Hurricane Katrina were almost as likely to be recovered from middle-class neighborhoods as from the city's poorer districts, such as the Lower 9th Ward, according to a Times analysis of data released by the state of Louisiana.In other words, the story is mostly about the income levels -- not the racial makeup-- of the neighborhoods inhabited by the deceased (and not necessarily the economic status of the dead themselves).
In fact, Leo goes to great lengths to ignore the one paragraph that does talk about race, the only one which would be relevant to his Op Ed. After noting that only 380 bodies could be identified by race, the Times noted:
Of those 380, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports, "33% of the identified victims in the city are white and 67% black."Doesn't sound like black folks got off too easy to me.
So there you have it -- an entire right-wing narrative about race and Katrina, publicized in media outlets around the country, that is based on 1) a false interpretation of 2) an old and 3) small study that 4) never mentions race, except 5) one paragraph which proves Leo wrong, and 6) only focuses on deaths, not people impacted in other ways.
Pretty astounding, even by right-wing attack media standards.
Fortunately, there was an excellent, updated, and in-depth report that came out this week that sets the story straight:
Study: Katrina hit black areas hardestWill this story spread, too?
Friday, January 27, 2006
By KAREN BROOKS / The Dallas Morning News
The areas of New Orleans that suffered the worst of Hurricane Katrina were home to 80 percent of its black population, university researchers said Thursday – underscoring the difficulties in the city's struggle to rebuild while preserving its cultural and racial heritage. [...]
The study, one of the most concrete profiles of Katrina victims to come out since the storm, cross-referenced the damaged areas with census tracts and found that the damaged areas had higher concentrations of residents who were black, poor, or renting their homes than did the undamaged areas. The results closely match a similar study done recently by the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper.
3 Comments:
There is no getting around the fact that NOLA is forever changed. For many who escaped the Ninth Ward, there is no going back. For some it was a hard deliverance for others the ties to the home place are strong and emotional. They will return. New Orleans and Louisiana is what it is. It is not the epitome of Anglo America. It can not even pass for a pale semblance of that other America - Thank God! Property owners are going to make out with the wholesale razing of a good deal of whole neighborhood blocks. Those owners are a gumbo of Anglos, local people of color, absentee estate holders and real-estate investment trusts. This disaster and its aftermath have opened a suppuration on the American consciousness that will hardly be salved over come election time. Progressives need to theme this election cycle, "It could happen to you." It could and it will. The images of the misery at the Dome are fading in American's collective conscious. This administration is all about, "don't look behind the curtain." The curtain needs to be ripped down. The revolution is in the canvas and the ballot box. Let's get at it!
Lantern Bearer
Look...here's the problem with this equation. The race issue which was exposed during Katrina...and I agree will become a defining moment in American history...is not what the storm did to African Americans within our city. What the storm did was pull hundreds of national and international cameras into the city and exposed the absurd level of African-American's living in poverty in New Orleans...and of course America. The Racial issues were already here....the storm just exposed them. A Hurricane doesn't discriminate...flood waters don't care what color you are. The lesson here is not how many African-Americans died in relation to white people....the lesson transcend Katrina....we had a frightening concentration of poverty in this city...how did this happen? What lead to the pathetic situation these people were living in? That's the real issue we should be focusing on, because New Orleans ain't the only slum in big city America.
http://katrenema1.blogspot.com/
The issue isn't the proportion of the black vs. white victims (that is, fatalities) in comparison to their proportions in the population as a whole. It's that the majority of New Orleans residents were black, which led to the city's emergency being given so little consideration.
If an all-white city had been destroyed by a hurricane, do you think that the government's response would have been different? Apparently some people seem to think so.
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