The relentless barrage of harrowing and tragic stories coming out of the areas destroyed by Hurricane Katrina seems only to get worse. There are reports of looting, rescuers being shot at and mob control over rescue shelters. While some of this debauched behavior is to be expected in such a disaster, Katrina seems to have brought out the very worst in some others – namely the gang of carpet-bagging political opportunists known as the Democratic Party and its clique of corrupt cohorts (the Congressional Black Caucus, NAACP, the news media, etc…).
The big political (non-)issue surfacing in Katrina’s wake is the role race is playing in the relief efforts. Lefties everywhere are alleging racism is the reason for the government’s inadequate response to the hurricane. The New York Times ran a news article titled “What happens to a race deferred?” that began, “The white people got out. Most of them, anyway. If television and newspaper images can be deemed a statistical sample, it was mostly black people who were left behind.” Like all the media have, this presumptuously titled article assumes rather than establishes the previously mentioned racism. Though not nearly as scientific as empirical observation of news images, the U.S. Census bureau holds that nearly seven out of 10 people from New Orleans are black – in fact, it is consistently ranked one of the “blackest” cities in the United States. It would logically follow, then, that as a large majority of the citizens are black, a large majority of the stranded victims would also be black. Then again, maybe logic is racist.
Following the “George Bush don’t care about black people” conspiracy posited by the grammatically challenged Kanye West, U-Mass professor Ron Walters explained, “Black people are mad because they feel the reason for the slow response is because those people are black and they didn’t support George Bush.” It is rumored that to wipe out all electoral opposition, “W” is next planning on sending one of his minion natural disasters, an earthquake perhaps, to destroy the bastion of homosexual Democratic voters holed up in San Francisco.
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), speaking for the Congressional Black Caucus, lamented, “We cannot allow it to be said that the difference between those who lived and those who died in this great storm and flood of 2005 was nothing more than poverty, age or skin color” and added that, “God cannot be pleased” with the Bush administration for its hurricane relief efforts. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, (D-Ohio) angrily forewarned that in the hurricane debate, “There will be another time to have issues about color.” The licentious Reverend Jesse Jackson, less prone to think before he speaks, stated, “(race) was at least a factor” in what he views as the Bush administration’s delayed response to Katrina.
With all the mention of “black pain” and suffering, one would get the impression that whites got out of the hurricane scot-free. There is little to no mention of the many thousands of whites who lost their homes, possessions, pets and lives as they knew them. Whites, too, were killed by the hurricane and subsequent flooding. It is racist, and dangerously misleading, for the media and politicians to ignore the human cost of this hurricane by focusing on its effects on one race.
The manufactured racial issues injected by Democrats into the Katrina debate are indicative of the broader character of their party. Even in such dire times as these, Democrats and their toadies cannot put aside petty partisan political rhetoric and vote pandering. Instead of inconsistently expressing concern for the blacks of this world (can you say “Sudan?”), and shamelessly manipulating this tragic natural disaster to attack the president as a racist “failure” (as did Nancy Pelosi), and a “national disgrace” (like Congressman Wexler, D-FL), Democrats need to abandon their mission of polarization and division and join America in our relief efforts.
-The writer is a sophomore majoring in Middle Eastern studies.
