A THOUGHT ON NEW ORLEANS AND AMERICA
After a night of not-so-fitful rest, I came back to my original essay and wanted to clarify some things. (The original version is at the bottom of this).
First of all, my point in comparing NY to NO is not to "rank" our national traumas. It is to say though if 9/11 was supposed to be some "wake up call," then NO are air raid sirens. Only, this time, our worst enemies aren't outside our borders. They are within it.
And the thing is - I don't want to sound quaintly naive in speaking on any of this. Part of my years in graduate school, in Ethnic Studies, was specifically focused on studying race and racism - its root causes, its history, its legacies - so it's not just like I woke up yesterday and realized, "hey, American hates poor people! It hates Black people! Whowouldathunkit?" I always knew the potential was here for something like NOLA.
But I also came of age in a post-civil rights era of feel-good liberal humanism and multiculturalism, where the party line was, "Racism still exists but..." where the key word in that phrase wasn't "racism." It was the "but..." and the litany of excuses and fictions that followed. So even though I know my Martin and Malcolm by heart, even though I've seen the videos of Selma, I've seen the photos of Alabama, I saw riots pop off outside my dorm room one April night in 1992, and I've seen all the other incidents since, part of me probably still clung to the belief that these are either in the past, and therefore, not something we're going to slide back on or, if they are in the present, they're exceptions, not the rule.
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I keep invoking the name of Derrick Bell in my posts because what Bell writes are parables for how racism could play out in what seemed like a dystopian future. However, I always read them as "realistic fictions," in other words, they were still stories, cautionary tales of what a worst-case-scenario could look like. This past week makes Bell's warnings intensely prophetic in a way that, for me, has been a revelation. As Kris Ex just wrote on his blog, "...this may prove to be one of the most pivotal moments of our generation."
Certainly, Bush is shook, for perhaps one of the first times I can remember. And straight up: when mainstream media mouthpieces like Paula Zhan and the rest of CNN hand you your ass over lies and excuses, you know we've reached a new point. I even read that Michelle Malkin was praising this guy. Ok?
So what now? I don't have the faintest except that, 1) give now. (Or pick some other place besides the Red Cross, but give). 2) Mistrust any excuses given by any public official. Unless they're saying, "this was on us and we blew it," it's bullshit spin and needs to be called out for it. For example, Chertoff is vying with FEMA's Mike Brown to be the stupidest man in the room at the moment. 3) Obviously, we need to confront poverty and racism for the 21st century. I feel stupid saying the latter since it's so goddamn obvious. And has been.
Ok, amendment over. In the meantime, read Kris' blog entry about what danger this current political moment may mean in the wake of Rehnquist's death. Also, the NY Times writes their analysis of how race and class played out in NOLA.
Also, I'm late in noticing this but Slate.com's coverage has been thorough on many of these issues.
(The original essay)
It's late (again) and I admit - I'm in a moment here where I'm thinking aloud and not that organized and I might end up amending some of these thoughts later as more time passes and I gain some better understanding of self. That said, let me try this out...
Right now, I'm convinced that what's happened in New Orleans this week is bigger than 9/11 and by that, I mean that its impact, truths and repercussions are greater and more profound than what our society and nation had to confront almost four years ago. This is not to disrespect the memory of all those killed nor the scar it left on New York. However, the difference is that though New York was struck by human action and technically speaking, New Orleans was struck by natural action, the suffering endured in NOLA is most certainly by human inaction and neglect and incompetence.
In other words, we can't blame the suffering and death in NOLA on terrorists from Saudi Arabia. Al Qaeda and Bin Laden's signature aren't on this. We can't invade another country hunting for scapegoats. For New Orleans, and all its victims/survivors - whatever you want to call them - this is on no one but us.
We fucked up. We failed. As every media talking head in the nation has figured out - America, in the 21st century, as the sole superpower left, as the presumed bastion of democracy, progress and social superiority - we watched one of our cities and somewhere around 100,000 of its people be destroyed, abandoned, starved, beaten, raped and left to rot - both literally and figuratively. That most of them happen to be poor and Black is not a coincidence. They are the ones who are always left for the waters and the rats. The difference now is that we can't hide behind our fictions about America's great social progress and equality. Sorry, but that grade school civics class bullshit doesn't fly anymore. Katrina washed all that away.
And unlike 9/11 or the Kennedy assassination or whatever national traumas we've endured before, there's no conspiracy theory at work, no black helicopters in the night. It's us. It's our public officials, it's our public indifference. And sure, it starts with Bush because the buck is supposed to stop with him - and no, he doesn't care about Black people, or poor people, or anyone who deviates from his fundamentalist agenda - but it's not just Bush. It's not just Mike Brown, though, as FEMA's head, he might possibly be the most deservedly despised public official out there right now. Oh, there is accountability to be made here. There are prices that need to be paid. But it's not just the top that rots. It goes all the way down the line to each of us as Americans.
I know that sounds overly dramatic but how do we escape accountability here? How do we say, "well, it wasn't my problem?" Is that what you'll want to hear when your home is destroyed and you're left in the dark, inside a stadium, scared and alone? This could have happened in my city, from an earthquake. Or yours, from a flood, or fire, or storm. New Orleans' displaced survivors are basically us but by the grace of God...and some really bad emergency planning.
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One more thought before I try to sleep: today was a full day of college football. And I wasn't angry that the games were on, that people were watching. But I had to think, "who the fuck cares?"
After 9/11, we had days of national mourning - no football, no baseball, no nothing. With NOLA, a disaster which is of far greater dimensions and consequences (again, no disrespect to NYC), there's no pause in the action, we just move on. And I can appreciate that difference: 9/11 was a shock to our collective system, like getting shot in the stomach. But NOLA is so much more profound a disaster of human and civic proportions - it's not a bullet but rather a tumor that we've just acknowledged even though it's been festering for decades.
I'm not saying we need to stop everything for a few days to mourn. But the world feels different now, doesn't it? 9/11 was supposedly the end of our innocence but this week confirms a far more horrible truth: we were never innocent to begin with.
Ugh, it's way too late. Consider this a first draft towards some better promulgation. Sleep now.
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