Posted on 09/15/2005 9:16:45 AM PDT by billorites
It takes something as big as Hurricane Katrina and the misery we saw among the poor black people of New Orleans to get America to focus on race and poverty. It happens about once every 30 or 40 years. What we saw unfold in the days after the hurricane was the most naked manifestation of conservative social policy towards the poor, where the message for decades has been: 'You are on your own'. Well, they really were on their own for five days in that Superdome, and it was Darwinism in action - the survival of the fittest. People said: 'It looks like something out of the Third World.' Well, New Orleans was Third World long before the hurricane.
It's not just Katrina, it's povertina. People were quick to call them refugees because they looked as if they were from another country. They are. Exiles in America. Their humanity had been rendered invisible so they were never given high priority when the well-to-do got out and the helicopters came for the few. Almost everyone stuck on rooftops, in the shelters, and dying by the side of the road was poor black.
In the end George Bush has to take responsibility. When [the rapper] Kanye West said the President does not care about black people, he was right, although the effects of his policies are different from what goes on in his soul. You have to distinguish between a racist intent and the racist consequences of his policies. Bush is still a 'frat boy', making jokes and trying to please everyone while the Neanderthals behind him push him more to the right.
Poverty has increased for the last four or five years. A million more Americans became poor last year, even as the super-wealthy became much richer. So where is the trickle-down, the equality of opportunity? Healthcare and education and the social safety net being ripped away - and that flawed structure was nowhere more evident than in a place such as New Orleans, 68 per cent black. The average adult income in some parishes of the city is under $8,000 (£4,350) a year. The average national income is $33,000, though for African-Americans it is about $24,000. It has one of the highest city murder rates in the US. From slave ships to the Superdome was not that big a journey.
New Orleans has always been a city that lived on the edge. The white blues man himself, Tennessee Williams, had it down in A Streetcar Named Desire - with Elysian Fields and cemeteries and the quest for paradise. When you live so close to death, behind the levees, you live more intensely, sexually, gastronomically, psychologically. Louis Armstrong came out of that unbelievable cultural breakthrough unprecedented in the history of American civilisation. The rural blues, the urban jazz. It is the tragi-comic lyricism that gives you the courage to get through the darkest storm.
Charlie Parker would have killed somebody if he had not blown his horn. The history of black people in America is one of unbelievable resilience in the face of crushing white supremacist powers.
This kind of dignity in your struggle cuts both ways, though, because it does not mobilise a collective uprising against the elites. That was the Black Panther movement. You probably need both. There would have been no Panthers without jazz. If I had been of Martin Luther King's generation I would never have gone to Harvard or Princeton.
They shot brother Martin dead like a dog in 1968 when the mobilisation of the black poor was just getting started. At least one of his surviving legacies was the quadrupling in the size of the black middle class. But Oprah [Winfrey] the billionaire and the black judges and chief executives and movie stars do not mean equality, or even equality of opportunity yet. Black faces in high places does not mean racism is over. Condoleezza Rice has sold her soul.
Now the black bourgeoisie have an even heavier obligation to fight for the 33 per cent of black children living in poverty - and to alleviate the spiritual crisis of hopelessness among young black men.
Bush talks about God, but he has forgotten the point of prophetic Christianity is compassion and justice for those who have least. Hip-hop has the anger that comes out of post-industrial, free-market America, but it lacks the progressiveness that produces organisations that will threaten the status quo. There has not been a giant since King, someone prepared to die and create an insurgency where many are prepared to die to upset the corporate elite. The Democrats are spineless.
There is the danger of nihilism and in the Superdome around the fourth day, there it was - husbands held at gunpoint while their wives were raped, someone stomped to death, people throwing themselves off the mezzanine floor, dozens of bodies.
It was a war of all against all - 'you're on your own' - in the centre of the American empire. But now that the aid is pouring in, vital as it is, do not confuse charity with justice. I'm not asking for a revolution, I am asking for reform. A Marshall Plan for the South could be the first step.
· Dr Cornel West is professor of African American studies and religion at Princeton University. His great grandfather was a slave. He is a rap artist and appeared as Counsellor West in Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions.
Interview by Joanna Walters, in Princeton, New Jersey
Cornel West?
No thanks!
Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality what we saw was a consequence of decades of liberal welfare state dependency.
Maybe Cornie can discuss these stats on his next bloviation.
Blacks committed 51.5% of all homicides between 1976-2000. Whites (which also includes all Hispanics) were responsible for only 46.4 % of all homicides for the same period. Remember, blacks are only 12% of the population, whites almost 70%! And a direct quote from the FBI/DOJ: "Blacks were over 7 times more likely than whites to commit homicide in 2000"
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm
A black male at birth today has a 28.5% chance of going to prison in it's life time. The chance for Hispanic males is almost half at 16% and white males, only 4.4%.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/llgsfp.pdf
Blacks commit 48.1% of all violent crimes Blacks commit 25% of violent crimes against children although blacks are 12% of the population Whites commit 48.0% of violent crimes (30% taking out the Hispanics lumped in) in spite of being almost 70% of the total population Blacks commit 53% of all violent crimes against adult victims
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cvvoatv.pdf
9% of all blacks are under correctional supervision (in 1997, up from 7.6% in 1990) 2% of all whites are under correctional supervision Blacks make up 47% of all yearly admissions to Federal and State prisons
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cpus9701.pdf
Blacks commit 27% of all murders of people over 65 Blacks commit 32% of all non-lethal violence against people over 65
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cpa6597.pdf
21% of blacks in prison possessed a gun during their offense vs. 14% of whites
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/fuo.pdf
7% of all black children, 1 in 14 have at least one parent in jail/prison .08% of all white children, 1 in 120 have at least one parent in jail/prison
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/iptc.pdf
Blacks commit 44% of all rapes, despite being only 12% of the population
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/soo.pdf
Blacks are responsible for 40.8% of all domestic violence cases
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/vi.pdf
Blacks commit over 30% of all workplace violence. Considering their unemployment rate this is even more astonishing.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/vw99.pdf
These stats are a little dated but maybe Jesse, Al, Cornie, and the other race-baiters should get their house in order before pointing fingers at anyone else.
Garbage.
We can now reveal the secret that poor blacks are escaping by boat to Cuba and Haiti.
The Mexican border isn't very far away Cornel. Why don't you start an emigration campaign to relieve your people of the oppressive burden of white supremacy, personified by the evil George W. Bush.
Or you could encourage black men to marry, provide for and raise their children so that they don't live like drug addicts.
The problem is the truth is something they avoid like the plague, they seem to like being the Poor me society. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their Ancestors,
"It's not just Katrina, it's povertina."
Them folks shur speek English good.
Gutless. Had to go to a Britsh paper to print his trash.
Worn out cliches and the title of "professor" may get you a few hot college chicks...but not much respect from intelligent people.
Interesting article. One wonders if the Guardian UK has ever looked into the mirror at Britain's treatment of its own black population? The fact is that, compared with other nations on the earth, American blacks have a substantially higher standard of living than virtually anywhere else on earth.
I watched rush hour traffic at an intersection that borders a predominantly black part of the city where I live and noted the following - late model SUV and high-end sedans flowed out of this black part of town on their way to the jobs they have that allow them to afford these vehicles. And, yet, in newspaper article after TV documentary, American blacks are virtually always described as "poor", "oppressed", "down-trodden", etc., etc.
If the Guardian UK is going to publish this kind of tripe, pointing the "fickle finger of fate" at America, they should be aware that the other 4 fingers on the hand pointing at us are pointing back at them.
Glass houses and all that rot, Guardian.
Why, it's racism plain and simple! /sarcasm
..reading.
West could only get published in the UK ..or NYC.
GREAT POST!
For how many centuries did the Brits consider the dark-skinned races "WOGS"?
Then, Prof West quickly forgets that it was the Brits and the US who stopped the slave ships on the high seas and ended slavery.
And that over 500,000 WHITE MEN died to free the blacks in the Civil War.
For a Professor, he sure is a dumbass.
What a frickin' liar. Not worthy of refutation in this space.
How dare you refer to woman as chicks I'm absolutely outraged< I/p> demand you apologies comments like this are offense to woman. LOL
"Now the black bourgeoisie have an even heavier obligation to fight for the 33 per cent of black children living in poverty"
I don't know, Cornell, I think I saw somewhere that 70% of black children were born to single moms. Ya think that might have something to do with them living in poverty? Here's another suggestion, GET A JOB!!!!
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