September 03 2005


The United States government has, once again, manifested its massive, chronic insensitivity to the plight of the poor, disenfranchised and descendants of African slaves, in New Orleans, Louisiana. The same administration which purports to uphold the sanctity of life in the womb has been the perpetrator of massive losses of life in Iraq, a fact well-known to all, whether one supports or detracts from such a policy. Now, however, the US cannot explain away its neo-genocidal policies of lack of prevention, indifference to needed pre-storm evacuation (it should have been forced at gunpoint if necessary) nor indifference to timely and adequate relief efforts, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, by attributing its policies to its mythical "war on terror". While the Federal government has participated in and orchestrated massive international airlifts, such as the Berlin airlift during the Cold War, apparently persons of African descent do not need rescue. Heck, park rangers in my home state of Massachusetts would air-drop bales of hay to starving deer in the snow-covered winter.

While the word is not to be used in polite Euro-descendant company, (in front of African Americans anyway), persons of African descent in the United States are still "niggers" - worthless, chump change, pieces of flesh who do not merit respect nor courtesy nor the satisfaction of minimum and dignified needs, not even as victims of a man-made disaster termed "natural".

I read an article by a U.S. scientist less than six months ago, in which he detailed the archaic and decrepit state of the New Orleans levee system. In that article, the author aptly predicted the disaster which occurred in New Orleans in the wake of the rainfall brought by Hurrican Katrina, stating that even a tropical storm or moderate hurricane could have caused such a disaster, never mind a Category Five. I could not believe that I was seeing this with my own eyes, several months later, having been blessed with only a Category One experience here in South Florida. But putting what has occurred and is occurring in Louisiana in the context of U.S. history and racism, and chalking it up to the fact that the niggers in New Orleans are Black, even though they do have oil, I painfully understand. In this light, it is still crushingly heart-breaking but not difficult to comprehend this man-made /government-made disaster and how the warning signs were ignored when prevention would have been feasible and effective.

Who were those who stayed behind and what resources did they have? While no scientific study has yet been done, I am going to add my (hopefully) educated two cents to the mix - mainly African American, mainly poor, many living in the projects or economically blighted neighborhoods, many who receive government assistance or are employed in low-wage positions - this means many persons who are unable to afford the stockpiling of flashlights, batteries, gallons of water, radios, canned goods, medicines and other products in their homes necessary to prepare for such a disaster. This, because they are forced to live week to week and month to month by an indifferent government and an indifferent money-hungry market system which could not even send enough buses and enough muscle to evacuate completely the city so that people would have lost homes, not lives; so that people would never have had to hear their children yelling "Daddy, I am so thirsty"; so that no woman would be gang-raped by groups of drunken psychopaths; so that no father would be shot trying to protect his babies' gallon of water.

Black America - my heart grieves for you... your sons and daughters are still sent to kill and die in rich people's wars, so many of you have been felonized and cannot even vote for the president who will send your sons and daughters here and there to those wars, you still live in the poorest most decrepit housing in urban America, your children still go to the worst schools in urban America, and despite the token Colin Powell's and Condoleeza Rice's in high office, you are still largely expected to be janitors instead of CEO's or surgeons. Slavery was abolished on paper, but the lives of the people I live and work with, who are called "Black" instead of just "human", are enmeshed in a slavery of poverty, thwarted hopes and official disrespect. How I pray that for each and every child who suffered, for each and every woman raped due to man-made insecurity, for each and every dead Black body, a law suit against the White House will be filed, along with a call for impeachment of the current President of the United States of America.