Posted on 09/14/2005 3:32:33 PM PDT by HairOfTheDog
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
~Martin Luther King Jr.
Yesterday as I sat and waited for an appointment with the director of a local agency for the homeless, I saw this quote on a poster on the wall. It's a great quote. I stared at it as I continued to think about the situation in New Orleans and the surrounding areas devastated by hurricane Katrina.
I've found the debate on Free Republic and elsewhere nearly intolerable in the wake of Katrina. As a political conservative with a long job history of helping the homeless and the poor, I have a much more complex view of people and poverty than some here. I am not one of those 'lucky' people who see only one small aspect of it and could therefore post quickly and sharply about what they saw. Those lucky people see losers who are receiving the deserved outcome for their poor decisions. They see lesser human beings and incompetent democrats as the simple and definable cause. It's not ~our~ problem, it's ~their~ problem.
When I looked at the faces of those people at the convention center, they were not foreign to me. I know them. I've spent years working with people who are poor and/or unemployed; some temporarily, some permanently…. Some good, and some very bad, and some still walking the line who could go one way or the other. They'll choose the path that looks like it will pay off. I've had impact at that moment of choice, in my work, and have helped some of my clients go the right way. Not all, but enough that I felt my desk and my job were not a waste of space and money. I learned a lot there.
I've learned from their stories that I had some things in common with them. I too, had spent some time being unemployed with a negative bank balance. I'd never sought help for it from some agency or charity, but that was because I had something they did not: A successful family and successful friends, who not only were there to help me when my life took a downturn, but also were there to expect more from me. These people, by and large, didn't have that. Many do not know anyone who ~is~ successful enough to help them. They may have seen successful people on TV, they may see them drive by in nice cars, but to the chronically poor those people look as foreign and hard to understand as street people do to the occupants of the nice cars. Neither sees the other as someone they could be. IMHO, they're both wrong.
But lets go back to the people in the nice cars for a minute, because they're the once I'm talking to now. The people posting on this forum who think they see the whole problem as the fault of the refugees. The ones that say it's not ~our~ problem, it's ~their~ problem. With that solved in their mind, they set out to post simple rants that make clear their view that they are superior to this problem, that they would never have been trapped the way the people at the convention center were. Those posters have seen all the conflicting images I have, but can file it neatly into their world view. They see only losers and looters, they see only people who they can't imagine being. And many punctuate their posts with simple racism that speaks more accurately than I would wish, of views that are still alive and well inside the republican voter base. To those whose only input is to classify this as a race issue I say you are not only outdated and shallow in your worldview, but unhelpful to those who will lead this country. You offer nothing we need.
I reject their views as not only wrong and uninformed, but as emotional and impractical as the world views often expressed by Jessie Jackson. To those who say these people are responsible for their own helplessness, or undeserving of help, I say "OK – close your eyes and think that. Now open them. Oops. They're still here. We still have to deal with the poor refugees of this storm. So now what?"
What do we do when we have to condemn an entire city and move them, willingly or not, somewhere else? It's easy to loathe the welfare programs these people have been living on when they were invisibly in the bad part of town…. Now the barrier that kept them from view is gone. The city that hid them from us has been condemned…. And man there's a lot of them.
I know well the people who will move in to help these people. They're good people, for the most part. I've worked with them and learned from them. When I was very new and conservatively naïve about charity and welfare and poor people, they told me the truth. The only difference between a social worker's outlook and the average suburban conservative's outlook is their assigned role in actually dealing with it. What the rest of us just opine about, they have in their inbox. They know who they're dealing with, they know which people can be helped, and they know which ones will not be helped. They help the ones they can, and they work their butts off and have a lot of good impact. I'm not talking about the leadership at these agencies, the ones who have to write grant proposals and talk in flowery language about helping the poor… And I'm certainly not talking about the pompous blaming bafflecrap we get from politicians. I'm talking about the front line workers… the ones who I've spent hours with, in break-rooms and in bars after hours, talking about our days.
Those who are very new to dealing with the poor often fit into one of two perspectives. They either(1) think that by classifying people as losers they have completed their participation in the subject, or they (2) think they want to help, and they think their acts of charity will be universally appreciated and accepted with the enthusiasm a stranded golden retriever would have toward their rescuer. These people aren't golden retrievers. They are people who bring with them such baggage as they could carry, often times the only baggage they have left is that they carry in their own minds. Some of them think life has been very unfair to them. And you know what? Some of them are right. These people have had a crappy thing happen to them with this storm.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
~Martin Luther King Jr.
These people have been tested, and are still being tested, by this challenge. Some have indeed reacted to the situation with utter incivility. The media loves to focus on them, and so we saw lots of looters. It's tempting in a crisis to focus on the one thing that is the most obvious, to the exclusion of everything else. As a pilot, I learned to avoid fixation and keep working the problem in emergency procedure drills, that fixation on one aspect of the problem can lead you to fail to deal with the rest of the emergency. Those lessons apply to this situation as well. Yes, we know there was a criminal element to this crisis. But also happening are other crises that don't stop happening just because we aren't looking at them. Real people who's real ability to get over this crisis is being tested. They need our help, and they are worthy of it. They aren't foreign to most of us, if we sat down and listened to what they have been through. I could be them. If I had been caught by this hurricane, this 'evacuation order' at many points in my life, I'd have been unable to consider, at a moment's notice, to pack up what I could carry and leave my home, perhaps indefinitely, without help from anyone. I am a republican, I am white, I am female, and I could be one of them.
What do we do now? As republicans, what do we offer these refugees? See, they are not the only ones being measured by this crisis, we are too. We want to lead this country, we ~are~ leading this country, and it's in our inbox.
I can tell you what I ~don't~ think we should do. I don't think we should talk down to these people or talk down about hurricane refugees as some class of people who all fit in the same box. Simply writing them off as the undesirables is not an option. That's WAY too easy to say, and solves nothing.
While the rest of the shallowly political on both sides argue and blame and say ugly things, I want conservatives to be measured as being better than that. The democrats in this country haven't had a good idea in years. Now is our chance to look at this enormous crisis with the practical, compassionate, Christian ideals that I know we possess. We need to pitch in and help, with both our effort, and our good example, and we should not tolerate those on either side who would put these refugees in a box, whether it's out of low expectations, or out of fear.
This has been a long rambling post, I know, for those who have stuck with me, but that's what I was thinking about as I stared at the Martin Luther King poster at the shelter.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
~Martin Luther King Jr.
Pinging a few friends....
For your consideration ;~D
Bump
Bump
I am bothered by all the racist talk on here of late, especially people pretending to talk like ghetto blacks. Enough of that already.
That said, it is hard for me to keep an open heart and continue to donate when the other side calls America racist, this was all the fault of Republicans and white people, etc.
I am also concerned about how much money this "relief" operation is going to cost. Is it going to be a lottery for people who never took care of themselves or planned for unforeseen circumstances?
Thank you for your post.
That's a very good post.
I've seen a few people condemn the evacuees, but most of us condemn the Mayor and Governor who made virtually zero effort to help those who were disabled, poor or just didn't have a car.
The leaders of New Orleans turned away the Red Cross, Salvation Army and National Guardsmen ready to maintain civil order in New Orleans. It is the leaders I'm angry with, and I'd guess fully 95% of Freepers are angry with.
We've heard so much about the reprehensible behavior of what I'm fairly sure is a small percentage of the survivors, and so much political posturing by the press, that we may be forgetting that there were many good, hardworking and decent Americans who's lives have been forever changed by this tragedy. Your post reminds us that it is those who are worthy of our prayers and efforts, and not the dregs and opportunists who seem to be drowning out the voices of the truly compassionate in this dark time.
A ping to wish you were here :~D
I agree with a great part of what you say. The part I do not agree with is the blame game. We did not start this game of blaming the democrats. They did. To sit idly by and take all the blame would be our ruination.
Once the truth outs, then the blame game can stop. Until then, I will be placing blame where it justly belongs to those in the media that will listen with one hand, while helping the people I can with the other.
I'm sorry this offends you, but I see no viable alternative.
Thank you very much for writing and posting this. I too was getting very frustrated with the self-righteous tone of FR posters around here, and your post was a long overdue dose of sanity here.
You and Uncle Joe Cannon both mention the blame game on the part of the democrats. It pisses me off too. Of course it does.
We can certainly counter it.... What I don't want to do is ~be~ it.
Thanks :~D
The ideologues who do this are no more representative of the other side than the modern-day KKK'ers on this board are of the Right.
Only a small minority sees this event as the result of a right -wing conspiracy of overt racism. Only a small minority thinks that those blacks got what they deserved. The majority - and indeed, the only people whose opinions are worth listening to - recognize that this is a tragedy caused by nature, and exacerbated by the gap between rich and poor found in America and by incompetance by New Orleans, Louisiana, and Federal officials.
Pay no mind to the racists - either the ones who take the entitlement mentality or the ones who think those blacks got what they deserved. No one gives a crap what they think. They don't speak for me.
A lot of people do. A lot of good people just ignore all the intolerable crap that's been posted. Many don't really want to take on the idiots and get into flame wars.
Only problem is, if we don't acknowledge it, if we don't fight it, someone reading might assume we accept or agree with it. I don't want only the fringes to control this discussion.
It is hard, very hard. I know many here are upset that the Pres. hasn't gotten in the mud with the Dem fingerpointing game. I'd love to see him hit back, but I know that what he's doing now is the right thing.
Anyway.. no matter how "provoked", there is simply no excuse for racism. I really wish people would stop it with their cute little jibes and remarks, and the ghetto speak. I never saw these sort of comments when I used to lurk (pre-Katrina). These sentiments do not represent or reflect the party of Ronald Reagan, in my opinion. They do it great discredit.
I can only imagine how our good black Freepers feel when the read some of this bilge.
Great post!
here
I agree.
I can only imagine how our good black Freepers feel when the read some of this bilge.
Two of the most prominent, rdb3, and mhking, left. I am sorry for that, and trying to show them that many on this forum, do want them here.
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