At a time of a city in dire distress, how could there be people who loot guns and TV sets when everybody is suffering? Why don't they all pull together in a humanitarian way?
Typical "good liberal" question. So let's answer it. Let's take a little tour around the NY Times today, to help you understand why there's looting in New Orleans. We'll be reading between the lines, children, because we start with this little fact: 67% of New Orleans is black, and accordingly, poor.
1. From a David Brooks editorial:
What's happening in New Orleans and Mississippi today is a human tragedy. But take a close look at the people you see wandering, devastated, around New Orleans: they are predominantly black and poor.
2. Now, a story about the looting itself. Being the NY Times, they're too polite to mention that the looters are black and poor, but bear that in mind.
Owners Take Up Arms as Looters Press Their Advantage:
Across New Orleans, the rule of law, like the city's levees, could not hold out after Hurricane Katrina. The desperate and the opportunistic took advantage of an overwhelmed police force and helped themselves to anything that could be carried, wheeled or floated away, including food, water, shoes, television sets, sporting goods and firearms.
......
One woman outside a Sav-a-Center on Tchoupitoulas Street was loading food, soda, water, bread, peanut butter and canned food into the trunk of a gray Oldsmobile. "Yes, in a sense it's wrong, but survival is the name of the game," said the woman, who would not identify herself. "I've got six grandchildren. We didn't know this was going to happen. The water is off. We're trying to get supplies we need."
3. Now, what could be the explanation for people looting when they should be pulling together in a humanitarian way? Is it because they are too poor to care? Here's a NY Times article about the U.S. poverty rate being up last year. For U.S. poverty rate, read black poverty rate (we're reading between the lines, remember).
Even as the economy grew, incomes stagnated last year and the poverty rate rose, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday. It was the first time on record that household incomes failed to increase for five straight years. The census's annual report card on the nation's economic well-being showed that a four-year-old expansion had still not done much to benefit many households. Median pretax income, $44,389, was at its lowest point since 1997, after inflation.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Mike
Ummm...does that mean I should feel sympathy for the looters? Unless they're looting for food and water and diapers, like a lot of people desperately need to. If they're "seeking revenge" by looting televisions and stereos and luxury items that they don't need, fuck 'em. I don't pity them.
2 - Natalie Davis
Ditto, Mr Mike.
Mr. Ash, I don't see what "black" has to do with the issue (oh, right -- the Democratic faithful equates the erroneous categorization "black" with "poor." Gotta love those Dems. Not.) Now, being poor might explain some of the looting (food, diapers, essentials). But those firing guns and grabbing TV sets and halting evacuations and mugging journalists are thieves and criminals, pure and simple.
3 - Mike
I AM a Dem, actually, Ms. Natalie (since we're being formal). But I still don't buy the "revenge of the oppressed" line. They are, indeed, thieves and criminals. Fuck 'em. If they're caught and fined or imprisoned, they deserve it.
4 - Natalie Davis
There are Dems with sense out there, Mr. Mike, thank goodness. Unfortunately, much of that sense isn't shared by the Dem groups that issue the marching orders, sad to say. Even if the thieves don't get caught or punished, they deserve to be.
5 - Phil
I think new Orleans is paying the price for many years of sin and lawlessness. It has obviously attrackedthe dredges of society and the looting is to be expected but should not be tolerated. Louisanna's governor needs to get her act together. She is pitiful.
God has His ways of punishing the sinful and i believe it has been done in New Orleans. The first business to get up and running are the casinos...
6 - JR
If they're caught and fined or imprisoned, they deserve it.
At this point, New Orleans itself is probably a more appropriate place to confine them than any prison.
7 - Mike
So wait, this was God's punishment for New Orleans? And what were the people in Mississippi and the rest of the Gulf Coast? God's collateral damage? And the tsunami, that was a punishment from God too?
8 - JR
Phil: God has His ways of punishing the sinful and i believe it has been done in New Orleans. The first business to get up and running are the casinos...
Then I guess your god is pretty dumb, because what as he accomplished?
9 - Phil
Who is pretty dumb...I think it is you
10 - Pete
After you have strung up the looters please start on the religious nuts.
11 - Phil
I really dont think God did this ...but can you think of a better city to be smitten by the hand of God
12 - Phil
please don't compare the truely religious people in this country with the looters in New Orleans
13 - Scott
Maybe I read a different post than you, but I didn't see any mention of "excusing" the looters, only explaining them. When we ask why they do depraved things like steal jewelry during the crisis or shoot at evacuation helicopters, Adam asks a better question: Are they too poor to care?
I'm all for being extraordinarily harsh with looters (with the exception of people going for food and water and medicine). Because of the threat of looters, people drowned in their own homes, too scared to abandon their posessions. Because of the lawlessness in New Orleans, people will die in the next hurricane because they also will not want to abandon their homes to gangs of criminals.
However, you people who think the rioting and looting is some sort of aberration, that it does not have support in America, are dead wrong. It's becoming very clear that the only thing protecting America from total anarchy is our incarceration of over 2 million people at any given time. Unless Republicans are willing to jail everyone who is not rich, or at least upper middle class, (and I think they are), this is a situation heading for disaster. Oppressed, marginalized, and ignored people will act outside the law, giving little heed to the laws that increasingly seem to only apply to them, not the elite.
14 - Bennett
No Phil, you're wrong about this. Your Christian God is just finishing up a five week vacation, otherwise he's have never let a hurricane hit the God Blessed U.S.A., right?
Actually Zeus and Hera are ganging up on New Orleans because the local's failed to pray and offer up sacrifices.
Just FYI...
15 - Phil
Actions speak louder than words!!!Decent moral people pull together in times of crisis. They are all a bunch of crack heads whose drug supplies got washed away.
16 - Phil
typical libs are now trying to blame this on Bush and the fact the was on vacation...what a bunch of idiots
17 - Phil
I rode out a hurricane on my 23 ft sail boat two years ago. It was a spiritual experience beyond compare. There was a dead fish inside my cockpit the next morning..
18 - steve
Something else to consider is that the media completely influences the perspective. The cameras show African Americans looting and the viewing public makes the assumption that all AAs are looting, or even worse that ONLY AAs are looting.
Sometimes its even worse. The media decides how you should perceive the informations they present. Case in point...
This picture shows people who "found" groceries at the local grocery store
here
While this man was looting at a grocery store. I wonder what the difference is?
here
19 - Dave Nalle
Well thank god that citizens in Louisiana have plenty of guns to defend their property with at a time like this.
Dave
20 - Eric Olsen
hmm, sounds like the NYT is still pissed about Bush beating Kerry
21 - ss
Phil says:
'I rode out a hurricane on my 23 ft sail boat two years ago.'
Looting is wrong, shooting at rescuers is unbelievably wrong.
But the worst part of this whole situation, and the surest proof that America has indeed gone astray, is the fact that someone as ignorant as Phil owns a 23' sailboat.
22 - Phil
its too bad people as dumb as you own a computor and can put up such ignorant messages
23 - Phil
i think you are just jealous
24 - Phil
at least i didn't steal it
25 - Natalie Davis
Eric, I don't understand the comment. True, the NYT isn't in Bush's corner, but what in its piece was unjustified or untrue?