Neil Peart
06-23-2008, 12:03 PM
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/MikeSAdams/2008/06/23/white_looters_in_iowa
During the week after Father’s Day, I received a number of interesting emails from readers asking me to write about the dearth of looting after the recent floods in Iowa. Specifically, they wanted me to write about the reason there was so much more looting in New Orleans after Katrina hit the “Chocolate City” in 2005. Of course, the problem involves so much more than race – a factor most people are thinking about, even if they won’t admit it.
That people would oversimplify many post-Katrina problems as “race problems” is unfortunate but somewhat understandable. I recall watching a Fox News reporter standing on a bridge in a flooded area of New Orleans just after Katrina. When the first black individual came wading out of the projects the reporter was simply astounded. Like me, the reporter had no idea that folks had been sitting in the projects waiting for someone to come and escort them out of harm’s way.
It was also sad to see that it was one black face after another emerging from the flooded waters. And it was sadder still that the words “we need” were the first spoken into the camera by these citizens – all utterly unprepared to provide for themselves and their families.
But of course the ugliest scenes were yet to come as looters would turn downtown New Orleans into a place more like downtown Baghdad. Some of the looters who would participate in the destruction of their own neighborhoods would later suggest that they were entitled to loot because of years and years of “oppression.”
During the week after Father’s Day, I received a number of interesting emails from readers asking me to write about the dearth of looting after the recent floods in Iowa. Specifically, they wanted me to write about the reason there was so much more looting in New Orleans after Katrina hit the “Chocolate City” in 2005. Of course, the problem involves so much more than race – a factor most people are thinking about, even if they won’t admit it.
That people would oversimplify many post-Katrina problems as “race problems” is unfortunate but somewhat understandable. I recall watching a Fox News reporter standing on a bridge in a flooded area of New Orleans just after Katrina. When the first black individual came wading out of the projects the reporter was simply astounded. Like me, the reporter had no idea that folks had been sitting in the projects waiting for someone to come and escort them out of harm’s way.
It was also sad to see that it was one black face after another emerging from the flooded waters. And it was sadder still that the words “we need” were the first spoken into the camera by these citizens – all utterly unprepared to provide for themselves and their families.
But of course the ugliest scenes were yet to come as looters would turn downtown New Orleans into a place more like downtown Baghdad. Some of the looters who would participate in the destruction of their own neighborhoods would later suggest that they were entitled to loot because of years and years of “oppression.”