PERSPECTIVES (9/12)

Lets not play the race card in New Orleans

by Jody L. Slaughter
editor and publisher

With the disaster in the Gulf Coast, it's a time for Americans to pull together like never before. It's happening in many places with donations to groups like the Red Cross and United Way at unprecedented levels. Thousands of Americans are opening their homes to refugees, knowing that it will likely be months before their houseguests can leave.

Unfortunately, it's also times like these when some choose to exploit those affected by the tragedy. Looting and other violence continue in and around metro New Orleans but with the National Guard given orders to shoot, that problem should be quelled quickly.

Then there are those like black civil rights leader Randall Robinson, author of such books as "The Debt--What America Owes to Blacks," who chooses to further exacerbate the situation with allegations of racism. In a blog post on The Huffington Post he writes:

"It is reported that black hurricane victims in New Orleans have begun eating corpses to survive. Four days after the storm, thousands of blacks in New Orleans are dying like dogs. No-one has come to help them.

I am a sixty-four year old African-American.

New Orleans marks the end of the America I strove for.

I am hopeless. I am sad. I am angry against my country for doing nothing when it mattered.

This is what we have come to. This defining watershed moment in America's racial history. For all the world to witness. For those who've been caused to listen for a lifetime to America's ceaseless hollow bleats about democracy. For Christians, Jews and Muslims at home and abroad. For rich and poor. For African-American soldiers fighting in Iraq. For African-Americans inside the halls of officialdom and out.

My hand shakes with anger as I write. I, the formerly un-jaundiced human rights advocate, have finally come to see my country for what it really is. A monstrous fraud.

But what can I do but write about how I feel. How millions, black like me, must feel at this, the lowest moment in my country's story."

Why, at this "lowest moment in our county's story" does Robinson choose to further racial hatred with his inflammatory rhetoric? Is he hoping his comments will incite race riots in our other major cities? That would solve many problems.

According to the U.S. Census, New Orleans is nearly 70 percent African American--of course blacks are going to be more affected by the devastation.

Perhaps Katrina is the racist one, for choosing to target a predominantly African American city. Maybe it's the New Orleans city planners who are racist, for building a city below sea level that is only protected by a precarious levee system.

In our arrogance as Americans, we forget that we live in a dangerous world. We expect our government to protect us from everything, but no one can stop mother nature.

History tells us that natural disasters like this occur about once per century. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people and decimated the city. Let's stop accusing our leaders, police and military of racism and let them do their jobs. Many lives are at stake.