Katrina
Yeah. Sorry, if your friends list is anything like mine, 99 of your last 102 entries are about Hurricane Katrina and black people. So, here's one more.
While it's startingly obvious to anyone with eyes and a brain who has turned on a TV, radio, or their LJ within the past 3 days, Black people carrying out the same actions as white counterparts are portrayed in a worse manner, simply by plays on semantics. To this I say, so what? Am I all of a sudden to be surprised? Should I turn on my TV and say The media is racist!! Of course not. Honestly, not the biggest news flash I've heard in my life. The media was racist before this hurricane, during, and will continue to be after. This shouldn't be a shocker to anyone who has ever lived in America.
I am not going to all of a sudden raise my fist in anger over a fact that has been evident since the very beginning of this country. Whether blatant or latent, it has always been present and will continue to be so. This is the world in which we live. Perhaps the only thing over which to anger ourselves over in this situation is the sluggish way in which the government has brought aid to its own citizens, even if the great majority of them happen to be Black (yup, we're people too!). Yes, we should be outraged - outraged that we have allowed suffering and death to flourish in our own country. We are all humans, and even if we have been quickly desensitised to the death of others, I would hope that there would be somewhere at least the slightest pangs of sadness for the torments of others. Is there not some bond that links everyone, as human beings? And how easy it is for others to say, "why should we help those people? They're looters. They're criminals. They don't deserve it." Ahh, what an easy way to ease the torn conscience. How much easier it is to hate than to help! I can easily say, "well if I were in that situation, I would never do that!" Pues, del dicho al hecho hay un gran trecho. Easier said than done. How am I to say what I'd do in any situation remotely similar? I have never been terribly worried about where my next meal was coming from. I have never lost my family in a wall of waves. I have never been swept out of my home with nothing more than the clothes on my back and a few futile prayers. What would I do? I don't know. Neither do you. Nontheless, when we fight between our own selfishness and the innate desire to work in support of the species, the former almost always prevails. I believe there is a Hindu word which I am currently unable to recall that translates to something like common harmony. More specifically, that the nobody can win at the expense of others. That if one person loses, everyone loses.
Which brings me to last year's tsunami. At the high school (mostly Black), the students were reluctant, to say the very least, to give money to the tsunami fund because they said "if it happened to Black people no one would do anything." Well ho ho, they were quite correct. This is hardly the point though. When does this reluctance cease? The logic of "we won't help them because they wouldn't help us" is flawed and dispiriting at best. At what point does this end?
If "we" (we as Blacks, we as Americans, we as Westerners, we as anyone where it is "us" v. "them,") had refused to help the tsunami victims, how can we complain if anyone refuses to help us? It's exactly what should happen, if we follow this pattern of reasoning. We shouldn't help them because they didn't help us, so no one is left to help anyone. A perfectly laid out plan if our ultimate goal is for everyone to die in solitude.
“When they came for the Jews, I was not a Jew, so I did not protest;
When they came for the communists, I was not a communist, so I did not protest;
When they came for the trade unionists, I was not a trade unionist, so I did not protest;
When they came for me, there was nobody left to protest.”
While it's startingly obvious to anyone with eyes and a brain who has turned on a TV, radio, or their LJ within the past 3 days, Black people carrying out the same actions as white counterparts are portrayed in a worse manner, simply by plays on semantics. To this I say, so what? Am I all of a sudden to be surprised? Should I turn on my TV and say The media is racist!! Of course not. Honestly, not the biggest news flash I've heard in my life. The media was racist before this hurricane, during, and will continue to be after. This shouldn't be a shocker to anyone who has ever lived in America.
I am not going to all of a sudden raise my fist in anger over a fact that has been evident since the very beginning of this country. Whether blatant or latent, it has always been present and will continue to be so. This is the world in which we live. Perhaps the only thing over which to anger ourselves over in this situation is the sluggish way in which the government has brought aid to its own citizens, even if the great majority of them happen to be Black (yup, we're people too!). Yes, we should be outraged - outraged that we have allowed suffering and death to flourish in our own country. We are all humans, and even if we have been quickly desensitised to the death of others, I would hope that there would be somewhere at least the slightest pangs of sadness for the torments of others. Is there not some bond that links everyone, as human beings? And how easy it is for others to say, "why should we help those people? They're looters. They're criminals. They don't deserve it." Ahh, what an easy way to ease the torn conscience. How much easier it is to hate than to help! I can easily say, "well if I were in that situation, I would never do that!" Pues, del dicho al hecho hay un gran trecho. Easier said than done. How am I to say what I'd do in any situation remotely similar? I have never been terribly worried about where my next meal was coming from. I have never lost my family in a wall of waves. I have never been swept out of my home with nothing more than the clothes on my back and a few futile prayers. What would I do? I don't know. Neither do you. Nontheless, when we fight between our own selfishness and the innate desire to work in support of the species, the former almost always prevails. I believe there is a Hindu word which I am currently unable to recall that translates to something like common harmony. More specifically, that the nobody can win at the expense of others. That if one person loses, everyone loses.
Which brings me to last year's tsunami. At the high school (mostly Black), the students were reluctant, to say the very least, to give money to the tsunami fund because they said "if it happened to Black people no one would do anything." Well ho ho, they were quite correct. This is hardly the point though. When does this reluctance cease? The logic of "we won't help them because they wouldn't help us" is flawed and dispiriting at best. At what point does this end?
If "we" (we as Blacks, we as Americans, we as Westerners, we as anyone where it is "us" v. "them,") had refused to help the tsunami victims, how can we complain if anyone refuses to help us? It's exactly what should happen, if we follow this pattern of reasoning. We shouldn't help them because they didn't help us, so no one is left to help anyone. A perfectly laid out plan if our ultimate goal is for everyone to die in solitude.
“When they came for the Jews, I was not a Jew, so I did not protest;
When they came for the communists, I was not a communist, so I did not protest;
When they came for the trade unionists, I was not a trade unionist, so I did not protest;
When they came for me, there was nobody left to protest.”