What if the U.S. saw images of hundreds of Natalee Holloways and Terri Schiavos stranded in the Superdome beamed into their livingrooms? Does anyone think for one second that we would see the sort of response we have seen so far toward this tragedy?
Some are balking at the idea that a racial dimension exists to the response to this tragedy but, if we saw pictures of Laci Peterson and Jennifer Wilbanks (the Wingnut Runaway Bride) and Nicole Simpson abandoned to fend for themselves in the New Orleans Convention Center, do you think we would have a debate about the need for more sniper shooters to take care of looters? No, you would hear a chorus of Wingnuts defending these actions as the those of brave souls taking responsibility for their own survival, not relying on the ineptitudes of a bloated, corrupt government.
If the hands of that now famous photo of a dead old black woman parked in a wheelchair outside the Convention Center, a blanket over her head, were young and white, can anyone say with a straight face that that is what she gets for not leaving the city when the authorities told everyone to evacuate? Would we hear these outlandish ideological explanations of learned helplessness as a result of decades of welfare if a bunch of Holloways, Wilbanks, and Petersons didn't walk the 80 miles in that heat, under those conditions, without food and water, to get to safety?
And I would like to ask Dennis Hastert whether it made sense to rebuild New Orleans if it were the home of thousands like Terri Schiavo? How in the world did he feel that a brain-dead woman warranted the extraordinary intervention of the federal government yet the home of hundreds of thousands of American citizens does not warrant the resources of our government to rebuild? Does the fact that about two-thirds of the population of that city have skin darker than his own have anything to do with it? Would he say the same thing about a city along the banks of one of the Great Lakes in the Midwest that was of historical and economic significance to this country and had a predominantly white middle-class population?
Change the color of the skin of the victims of this tragedy and then tell me whether we would see unfold on the part of elected officials the chaos and ineptitude we have so far witnessed.
