Could have Calypso Louie and Kayne West been wrong? I demand a recount! Statistics released by the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals suggest that fewer than half of the victims of Hurricane Katrina were black, and that whites died at the highest rate of all races in New Orleans. http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200512\NAT20051214b.html
I just looked up the stats ( http://www.dhh.louisiana.gov/offices/publications/pubs-192/Deceased Victims_1213_press release.pdf ). Like I have said before, it's primarily *poor* people who died, not necessarily black people. The age distribution was also skewed remarkably old - 40% of the deceased were over 75 years old, and less than 20% were under 50 years old. Less than 4% were under 20. I'm going to speculate and say that the white percentages are skewed up due to abandoned old people in nursing homes. This is a poverty issue, not a race issue.
I don't think anyone is arguing that it was the impoverished that suffered the most, but everything that was written, broadcast, etc. after the storm was about "the suffering of the black of New Orleans". Obviously, trying to make it a racial issue. The real question is, how far back was this printed in the NYT?
Or the BBC commentator who claimed (from his dry studio in London) that Marine helicopters were shooting black people trying to leave New Orleans.
That is so unfair, biased, and obviously hateful. He hates young poor people, too, especially if they're abnormally short...
Except that the notoriously reactionary, right-wing, pro-Bush LA Times went out of it's way to say that rich, white folk died too: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...ec18,1,1882418.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
The New York Times had a similar report. Yes, the dead were more likely to be working class, but among those the Times samples, it appears many were offered a ride and decided to stay behind.
You're all wrong. God hates the US for invading Iraq. And he wants New Orleans to be "chocolate" again. http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/01/16/D8F61AV80.html "Surely God is mad at America. He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it's destroyed and put stress on this country," Nagin, who is black, said as he and other city leaders marked Martin Luther King Day. "Surely he doesn't approve of us being in Iraq under false pretenses. But surely he is upset at black America also. We're not taking care of ourselves." "It's time for us to come together. It's time for us to rebuild New Orleans _ the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans," the mayor said. "This city will be a majority African American city. It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no other way. It wouldn't be New Orleans." Does this mean that the honorable mayor is selling his house in Dallas and moving back? Amazing.
More or less biting the hand that fed him…. http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/01/17/D8F6M8IG2.html New Orleans was more than 65 percent black before Hurricane Katrina. The storm displaced about three-quarters of the city's population. Most of the estimated 125,000 residents who have been able to return are white. Nagin, a former cable company executive and political novice, was elected in 2002 with about 90 percent of the white vote, according to polls conducted by Ed Renwick, the director of Loyola University's Institute of Politics. Nagin received less than half the black vote, Renwick said Tuesday, and the mayor's heaviest criticism since taking office has come from rival political factions in the black community, many of whom have portrayed him as an "Uncle Tom" who caters to the interests of white businessmen.