Moore on the Racial Angle

Acel Moore is kind of like Al Sharpton, if there's a whiff of racism against the African-American community, Mr. Moore is all over it. He's not about to sit out the post Katrina Bush bashing, especially when he can slam the president as racist:

It's very clear to me that race and economic class were the major reasons the government was slow and uncoordinated in its initial response. Those who have suffered the most are mostly poor blacks or whites (nice to add whites as an afterthought--ed).

Those who heeded the call to evacuate New Orleans were those who had automobiles and a steady income and thus could afford to leave.

Rapper Kanye West may have been politically incorrect during a telethon for Hurricane Katrina survivors when he said that "George Bush doesn't care about black people," but he was not completely off the mark.

If a comparable natural disaster hit a predominantly white, upper- or middle-class community, state and federal governments would have stepped lively.

The evidence shows that the White House, Congress, and the federal courts are controlled by conservative ideologues whose policies do not favor African Americans and other people of color and the poor.

Ah, but here's the truth. New Orleans was not hit as severely as Mississippi as shown by these photos. In the immediate aftermath of the storm, local and state leaders in MS took action to assist those hit the hardest, they knew that the federal response would be slower in coming as the maze of red tape is harder to navigate at the federal level.

So what did the good people of MS do that those in LA did not? They assisted each other. Black, white or Asian, it didn't matter, they helped one another and provided for themselves until assistance could reach them.

Juxtapose that with New Orleans. People in that city, at least those left behind because hundreds of buses were not allocated by the city, chose to loot and steal from their neighbors. They decided to visit violence on those they they should have been helping. Those who remained chose to rely on the government to help them instead of helping themselves. They further chose to blame the government for their plight by screaming racism, instead of blaming those who were truly responsible. One neighboring city closed a vital bridge to safety because that city did not want the looters and thugs to do to their city what they would eventually do to NO. By the way Mr. Moore, perhaps you'll be intellectually honest enough to see the real racism in that action, but alas, you can't bring yourself to heep scorn on fellow Democrats, can you?