I’ve been hearing a lot in the past few days about looting and rioting in New Orleans, and isn’t it terrible — all these poor people running around with guns, scaring the daylights out of reporters, holding nice middle-class people in terror, etc, etc. I don’t mean to be rude, but really — is anyone surprised?
It’s self-evident that we continue to live in a racially and economically divided society — although those of us who live on the upper sides of those divides don’t have to think about it much, unless we drive through the barrio or the ghetto or the bad area of town that doesn’t have a name. So we can ignore that part of town, that part of society, and that’s fine in theory until something like, say, a natural disaster forces us to confront the existence of that part of society. And here it is — and it’s pissed.
Nice Middle-class White Person: Well, gosh, why are they all so angry? Why the guns and the looting and the rioting? It’s so scary!
Erm, let’s think about this. A hurricane is a predictable event. What to do in a hurricane is to leave the area. Those in town who could, left — which means they gassed up their cars, bought food and bottled water, and drove away. The part of society that’s rioting right now didn’t have that option — they don’t have cars that work, they couldn’t afford gas, they couldn’t get everyone in the family into the car, whatever — leaving wasn’t an option. Now they’ve been stuck in a flooded town with little relief aid for several days, and they’re asking why they’re not being helped. In the absence of a concentrated and immediate relief effort, they’re helping themselves to what they want.
A similar phenomenon occurred in Nicaragua over a decade ago — only in this case, the hurricane that swept through in 1994 was absolutely predicted and the upper class was absolutely told about it. The government just neglected to tell the lower classes about it and then provided no relief aid. The fallout from the event is still occurring, and the people have lost any faith in the government, because the government’s lack of action basically said “we don’t care if you live or die.”
Rioting and looting can be selfishly motivated, sure. Most of us wouldn’t pass up the opportunity for free stuff if we could get away with it or if the situation were right, even if we think stealing is wrong. But rioting and looting as a mass phenomenon spring from another place, I think: desperation and anger. When it’s been demonstrated (again) that you’re at the bottom on the scale of whose life is worth more, breaking the rules of the society that deems you worthless has got to become easy, if not necessary.
It’s all bad. But the system that allowed this to happen was laid in place long before the hurricane hit.
Absolutely. Screw the loss of property. I can’t beleive the mayor asked police to stop rescuing people to stop looting. I’m assuming that we all heard it wrong and he wanted to stop the bands of armed thugs. That much is a crazy problem. Stolen TV’s? Boo-hoo. Who cares? The government was too slow to help them and some claimed that looters were the only ones providing food and water in the convention center. That all being said, some horrible things were done by people in that crowd to other people in that crowd, and I’m sure we’ll all find out about it when it becomes a made for tv movie on NBC in about two months. I will say this: poor white people would have acted the same way in that crowd. I will also say that it’s interesting that rather than go down and help, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are using this as an excuse to get their faces on TV again. Idiots. Lying, worthless idiots. What black people need is some genuine leadership.
September 3rd, 2005, at 11:13 am #