Condoleezza Rice is assuring Americans that race had nothing to do with the slow response. No, it's not race, Dr. Rice. You're right. It's class, and it's something you still won't comment on. What if someone had asked her, "Did class have anything to do with it?" What would her response be? If she were honest, maybe she'd just stare back, slackjawed. But from her past reactions, I'm sure she'd dissemble.
Unfortunately, in the United States (and especially) in the South, race and class intersect. This is something I studied in Statistics 101. Statistics 101. Socioeconomics isn't so difficult to understand.
I'm really afraid that Bush's worldview, that the poor need to take care of themselves, is playing out right in front of our eyes. He's turned away help from other nations--"We can take care of ourselves." We Americans, presumably, but really he means the people stuck there. They can take care of themselves. We'll provide help when they get themselves together.
My feelings on the matter haven't changed in essence, although I feel kind of vindicated for ahving said what I did considering recent events...
everybody likes to pretend like it just ain't so... Sure, some progress has been made, but you don't have oto go outside LJ or probably the community that you live in to see some kind of example of how much this crap is still with us. The bad meme continues to perpetuate itself. I have cousins who are (or at least were 10 years ago) as blatantly if not as violently racist as any Georgia cracker...
Just read Studs Terkel's Talking to Myself, and a lot of it has to do with visiting South Africa in 1963 and the civil rights movement in America, of which he was a determined part... and it's to some degree ennobling, because you can feel the determination coming through, and yet saddening, because, as I say, so little has really changed.
It's not all bad, like the story from a woman at our church recently who had asked her son the name of one of his classmates, and when he asked which one she was referring to, she said, "The little black boy," and he said, "Black?"
He honestly didn't see the other boy according to his skin color.
Semirelevant to that, I really feel that people like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, etc., do more harm than good by advocating what are essentially seperatist and possibly "reverse racist" policies...
I don't know how all of this is going to work out, but I can't claim to be optimistic about it.
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Date: 2005-09-03 09:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 11:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 11:59 pm (UTC)Unfortunately, in the United States (and especially) in the South, race and class intersect. This is something I studied in Statistics 101. Statistics 101. Socioeconomics isn't so difficult to understand.
I'm really afraid that Bush's worldview, that the poor need to take care of themselves, is playing out right in front of our eyes. He's turned away help from other nations--"We can take care of ourselves." We Americans, presumably, but really he means the people stuck there. They can take care of themselves. We'll provide help when they get themselves together.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-05 11:04 am (UTC)everybody likes to pretend like it just ain't so... Sure, some progress has been made, but you don't have oto go outside LJ or probably the community that you live in to see some kind of example of how much this crap is still with us. The bad meme continues to perpetuate itself. I have cousins who are (or at least were 10 years ago) as blatantly if not as violently racist as any Georgia cracker...
Just read Studs Terkel's Talking to Myself, and a lot of it has to do with visiting South Africa in 1963 and the civil rights movement in America, of which he was a determined part... and it's to some degree ennobling, because you can feel the determination coming through, and yet saddening, because, as I say, so little has really changed.
It's not all bad, like the story from a woman at our church recently who had asked her son the name of one of his classmates, and when he asked which one she was referring to, she said, "The little black boy," and he said, "Black?"
He honestly didn't see the other boy according to his skin color.
Semirelevant to that, I really feel that people like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, etc., do more harm than good by advocating what are essentially seperatist and possibly "reverse racist" policies...
I don't know how all of this is going to work out, but I can't claim to be optimistic about it.