Two things are making me ashamed of people....the ones with white skin.
First, Anderson Cooper is doing a piece right now on CNN: some survivors (mostly black, many with children, many infirm and some in wheelchairs) were stranded on the bridge to Gretna (a white community on DRY LAND) and the police would not let them through or even allow them to stay on the bridge. The police shot over the heads of these survivors and even took some of their provisions. Their stated reason: Gretna was secure, and empty of residents who had evacuated prior to Katrina. The Gretna police didn't want to risk the property of the residents who evacuated.
I guess in Gretna, property is more important than human lives.
Heartless, souless, disgusting.
The second is a new Gallup poll on CNN.com (from 9pm EST 9/12/05)
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/12/katrina.race.poll/index.html
I know this is just one poll, but seen in the context of so much ugliness...well...I am so disheartened.
The poll found that six in 10 blacks interviewed said the federal government was slow in rescuing those stranded in New Orleans after Katrina because many of the people in the Louisiana city were black. But only about one in eight white respondents shared that view.
[that's 60% of blacks vs 12.5% whites folks, what the hell is wrong with this picture????]
The numbers were similar on whether the rescues were slower because the victims were poor, with 63 percent of blacks blaming poverty and 21 percent of whites doing so.
[snip]
Half of all whites said people who broke into stores and took things were mostly criminals. Only 16 percent of blacks agreed, with 77 percent saying the looters were mostly desperate people trying to find a way to survive.
Seventy-seven percent of blacks were bothered when the residents who evacuated were referred to as "refugees," while only 37 percent of whites had a problem with the term.
How can we see the same things and still be so different. How can so many whites be so color blind, and so blind to what I see as the truth?