Hurricane Katrina and the race card: 5 years later
President Obama is headed to New Orleans this weekend to mark the 5th anniversary of Katrina. The papers and airwaves will be clogged with all sorts of retrospectives. My column today reminds you of the ugly racial demagoguery by leading Democrats and “civil rights” leaders from Jimmy Carter to Charlie Rangel to Malik Zulu Shabazz. It’s a divide that has also deepened in Obama’s imaginary age of post-racialism.
Related from Charles Krauthammer: The last refuge of a liberal. “What’s a liberal to do? Pull out the bigotry charge, the trump that preempts debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the contrary argument. The most venerable of these trumps is, of course, the race card.”
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Hurricane Katrina and the race card: 5 years later
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010
This weekend, on the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, civil rights activists and hip-hop stars will hold what they call a “healing ceremony” to commemorate the disaster. President Obama will speak at a separate event in New Orleans on Sunday. But don’t expect any of these reconciliation-seeking leaders to confront the indelible stain of racial demagoguery left by the left in Katrina’s aftermath. Hating George W. Bush means never having to say you’re sorry.
The Olympic gold medal for racial grievance-mongering went to rapper Kanye West, who railed during a supposedly nonpolitical nationwide telethon that the government was shooting “us,” that “those are my people down there,” and that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people!” West’s vulgar exploitation of a charity drive — which was meant to unite America — left most viewers with the same aghast, frozen expression as the one on comedian Mike Myers’ face as he tried to rescue their fundraising segment from the sewage.
Not to be outdone, the Congressional Black Caucus convened a press conference to blast news reporters for describing Katrina victims as “refugees.” Yes, really. The Rev. Jesse Jackson echoed their complaint: “It is racist to call American citizens refugees.” Refugees are, by dictionary definition, “exiles who flee for safety.” How this could be construed as bigoted remains as much a mystery as the source of unhinged Huffington Post blogger and self-proclaimed “social justice advocate” Randall Robinson’s bogus claim “that black hurricane victims in New Orleans have begun eating corpses to survive.”
Robinson retracted the report, but did not apologize for spreading the black cannibalism tale around the world and using Katrina to vent his own anti-American venom about his country being a “monstrous fraud.” Nation of Islam race hustler-in-chief Louis Farrakhan trafficked in his own baseless conspiracy-mongering about “a 25-foot-deep crater under the levee breach” indicating that the levee “may have been blown up to destroy the black part of town and keep the white part dry.” Director Spike Lee stoked the levee truthers further, declaring, “If they can rig an election, they can do anything!”
New Black Panther Party head Malik Zulu Shabazz chimed in, calling the Katrina rescue and recovery operation a “racist occupation of subjugation rather than a relief effort,” and saying it was designed “to keep non-white people in a state of subjugation on all levels, and they are viewed as expendable in order to protect the interest of the system.” Donning her own tinfoil hat, Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee suggested that Republican suppression of the black vote in 2000 and 2004 was to blame for the government’s botched Katrina response.
Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel drove the racial wedge in deeper by comparing President Bush to brutal Alabama segregationist Bull Connor. “If there’s one thing that George Bush has done that we should never forget,” Rangel spewed, “it’s that for us and for our children, he has shattered the myth of white supremacy once and for all.” At a House hearing, a Katrina witness testified unchallenged that black New Orleans residents were victims of “genocide and ethnic cleansing.”
The execrable Jimmy Carter waited a few months to unleash his own Bush-bashing bile — at the funeral of Coretta Scott King, no less — in February 2006. “We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, those who were most devastated by Katrina, to know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans.”
Carter’s speech not only lacked basic decency. It lacked any grounding in reality. According to vital statistics released just months after the storm by the primary morgue that processed the bodies of the deceased, 48 percent of those who died in the natural disaster were black, 41 percent were white, with another 8 percent unknown and 2 percent Hispanic. Little-noted follow-up analysis confirmed those preliminary results and also debunked the myth that the poor were disproportionately affected by the storm.
Five years later, the same color-coded paranoia and political opportunism that poisoned the Hurricane Katrina recovery permeates every current conflict in the public square: Ground Zero Mosque opponents are all suspiciously funded bigots, according to Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The Tea Party movement is the new Bull Connor, according to every liberal New York Times columnist. President Obama’s critics hate black people, according to every major black Hollywood director and hip-hop mogul. As for the soul-fixing, Nobel Peace Prize-winning commander-in-chief whose election was supposed to heal the divide, I will guarantee you he won’t ever lift a finger to repudiate the cynical smear tactics against his unjustly accused predecessor.
Post-racial America, we never knew you.
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Categories: Al Sharpton,George W. Bush,Jimmy Carter,Politics,Race Hustlers,Race relations
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Of course not. You can rationalize anything.
You are a Collectivist. And a liar.
No. How stupid are you?
Let me run with this. You’re telling me that GOVERNMENT telling BUSINESSES whom they must serve and hire is NOT LIMITED GOVERNMENT.
Oh, and I forgot…on the basis of that statement, you are also a racist.
OK Esquire, you went to law school, so you presumably know the difference between discrimination that is invidious and discrimination that is not.
correction…
Let me run with this. You’re telling me that GOVERNMENT telling BUSINESSES whom they must serve and hire is
NOTLIMITED GOVERNMENT.Your formulation, first, is typically bassackwards.
The Federal government has a legitimate role in assuring that all people are treated equally under law.
Almost from the founding, if you CHOSE to engage in public accommodations-related business, Congress was held to have a legitimate role in assuring those services were conducted in certain ways. That’s how we got common carrier law.
Deemocrats in the South passed Jim Crow laws, EXPRESSLY to prevent people who chose to open their accommodations to people…regardless…from gaining a market advantage over segregationists.
NO law tells me I HAVE to serve anyone.
It tells me that, IF I chose to participate in certain businesses, I MAY NOT DENY service to people SOLELY on the basis of race, etc.
As a capitalist, I don’t need anyone to tell me any such thing, as all such considerations are extraneous.
That basic law is not inconsistent with most conservative’s view of the proper role of the Central government. I do know some…mostly libertarians…who have some qualms. They are not as racist as are you.
The basic law was corrupted decades ago, and now does things people said when it was passed would never be done.
Long before law school, I learned there are distinctions without difference.
As a child, I learned you can call dog sh!t “Sunday dinner”. It never changes reality.
Just curious, (and apologies if somebody else already asked), but how come Brian “I bow for Obama” Williams, and NBC (lib propaganda central) is advertising on this page, and advertising for that matter about its Katrina propaganda special?
I know of some, namely Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, who opposed the Civil Rights Act on limited government and states’ rights grounds, and I would not characterize them as kooky libertarians, but mainstream conservatives. Conservative Republicans in the 1960′s, not Rockefeller RINO’s, by and large opposed the Civil Rights Act, not because they were racists but because the position was naturally consistent with their political philosophy. To this day, law and economics types oppose Title VII as intrusive legislation that is unnecessary in a free market.
There is nothing racist about Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan or Richard Posner or Rand Paul in their opposition to civil rights legislation. They have/had viewpoints on government that were naturally antithetical to the Civil Rights Act.
However, it is an utter fallacy to equate any of them, or Glenn Beck, with MLK, who in his support of federal (yes, federal) civil rights legislation made him a big government liberal.
If you have a response that does not involve an insult, I might have a little bit of respect for you.
On August 27th, 2010 at 4:12 pm, Red State Skeptic said:
—————————————-
I actually think the libertarian argument holds more water with regard to discrimination today than it did then.
Today, I (and, I should think, the vast majority of whites) would not set foot in a place of business that I knew discriminated against blacks (or women, or gays). Such a place, I’m arguing, would ultimately be driven out of business by lack of business. The old “let the people/the market decide” argument.
Put up your cites supporting each element of that claim.
That is a lie. I supported it (before its perversion), and still do (as intended). I am the blood enemy of BIG GOVERNMENT.
I don’t have any for you. Why the HELL would I care?
Badabing, jerk.
I don’t know where your from, but when I was a kid there was this place in South Carolina that didn’t serve blacks, and it did fine business. My family even went there for special occasions before their discrimination policy made the news. Fortunately, the city decided to revoke its liquor license, and it shut down. This was just 20 years ago. I don’t think it lost any business from anyone but my family as a matter of conscious, and like a lot of places in the South, its staff and clientele were all white anyway, so if they were worse off for their policy, the effect was small enough that it was still a viable discriminatory business.
Juan Williams…as your source for what Reagan and Goldwater thought?
Please, racist…!!!
Juan Williams via NPR. Now that’s what I call an unbiased source. He does a really good job of blending his opinions in with actual facts, although he does get pretty blatant about it on a couple of occasions:
And you were calling Adams’ testimony about the NBPP “prosecution” dishonest?
On August 27th, 2010 at 4:45 pm, Red State Skeptic said:
—————————————-
Maybe I’m a bit idealistic. I grew up and still live in Missouri, and haven’t had to deal with the issue of businesses that discriminate in my lifetime.
Anyway, I was just putting a “let the free market deal with discrimination” argument out there. I do think the government has a place in preventing people from being unable to work, eat where they want to eat, etc., due to race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. It goes back to the “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” part of the Constitution.
And since you brought up Beck, here’s what some black leaders had to say:
really?
I called it a liar in #45.
You are just a leader, spacey.
What else can on say…???
(genuflects in presumptive direction of spaceyton)
I think we can stick a fork in Red.
He’s done.
You do know that Goldwater voted against the CRA, right?
Relevance, racist…?
More about the Beck rally – note the speakers:
From my piece….
http://hindenblog1.blogspot.com/2010/08/crash-glenn-beck-flushing-collective.html
Perhaps our favorite comes from John Avlon, a perfidious little twerp who writes for The Daily Beast; I Have A Nightmare.
Really? EVERYTHING King stood for? Well, here’s how Avlon gets to that point;
He identifies Beck and Palin as POPULISTS (omitting that Carter, Clinton and Obama ran as populists).
He identifies George Wallace as a POPULIST (explaining away the fact Wallace was a DEMOCRAT)
Beck, Palin, and Wallace all cited to the Constitution.
Ergo, and ipso fatso…Beck and Palin are EXACTLY like Wallace, and the natural enemies of King.
Read it all.
As senate majority leader LBJ held stopped civil rights from being passed in the 1950′s that Ike was trying to get thru. I think your opinion over who was more against and north vs south means nothing to nobody! Facts are peskey little things.
Errah cuz that’s the amurikan whey. green is green and a dollar of liberal cash given to Michelle is a dollar not given to Media Matters! I do question the genius at NBC for ad placement though! Probably the same mindset that greenlighted the 41k Chevy Volt or casts George Clooney as a American Patriot in all those films.
Errah, the good ole Race Card, no expiration date! As good then as it is now! Collect them and trade em with all your friends!
Sorry to butt in on your irreligious conversation.
Every time I see Katrina in the news these days I am reminded of the show Treme that Mr.David Simon Produced/directed/wrote about some of the people in N.O., and the trials and tribulations. Meanwhile, needless to say, their problems were Bush’s fault, along with some others, like the cops, people coming to help, and those of the U.S. that can’t stand their music.
It’s another example of the entertainment industry’s swipe at the U.S. government, and the rest of us yahoos who just don’t sympathize with people who vote Dhimmicratic for the past 100 years.
((crickets))
Nagin (New Orleans choculate city) and Blanco are living proof when incompetence meets with mother nature.
Of course what they did to the US Constitution 2nd amendment and law abiding gun owners was also a travesty and was a good example of why the founding fathers put in the means for defense against a tyranical government.
GSP
You still need to justify this baseless statement.
The confiscation of everybody’s weapons? People are still trying to get their weapons back. Remember the cops commandeering vehicles from the Cadillac dealership. The interview with two of NOPD’s finest while they looted a store wihh a shopping basket no less. And my favorite, as mentioned, people reverting to cannibalism a mere 48 or 72 hours into the ‘crisis’. The 10 – 15 cops holed up in a motel. And my other favorite: the finding that after investigation there were 400 cops on the payroll that never reported to work or perhaps didn’t even exist.
And Nagan wanting all the redtape done away with and the mustering of all the Peter Pan and other busses sent immediately to NO to transport the homeless. Then there was discovered, at last, footage of scores of school busses parked in yards right in the city.
Plea: Anybody know what happened on the 400 phantom cops case? I would love to hear the disposition of that fraud case. Hopefully, a lot of people were hung.
THEY CONFISCATED THE GUNS OF EVERYONE WITHOUT CAUSE FROM PERFECTLY INNOCENT INHABITANTS OF NOPD AND THEY WEREN’T NICE ABOUT IT EITHER. There is footage of SWAT-type guys swarming a 70+ year old woman because she had her gun in her hand. All she wanted to do was stay in and protect her home.
I lived in New Orleans for 4 years and can assure you that if a criminal was at one end of the street and a cop at the other, you went to the criminal, he was much nicer.
I would recommend that if you want a good look at race issue Google C. L. Bryant from Shreveport, La. He has a great movie trailer on youtube.
They are the racists.
Because of the use of the “Race Card” by so many people like Sharpton, West, etc on things that are NOT a race issue, but a political issue, I have personally stopped equating racism with race. They have turned it into liberal politics. Sadly this causes any real racist incidents to get ignored by many.
I used to visit NO alot, and that quote is so true. I do not think I have ever been to a city where the police were so apathetic to crime. I think this whole media obsession with NO 5 years later is a desperate attempt to rally voters into a we hate Bush rally, trying to equate it to Repubs and hoping that it will keep their Dem gods in power. I have not bothered to watch any of it, knowing that the main faults of what happened was local city and state government incompetence and apathy.
I think most people have tired of the racist call. The hustlers have cheapened the word just like they did the Nazi parallel. Whenever I hear the word racist, I automatically just think of it as a group trying to get their way, like a 2 year old holding their breath. This may be the only good thing that comes out of the Obama presidency, the end of white guilt.
I don’t plan to have the TV on very much today. I have seen enough Katrina coverage, thank you! Good grief! All they talk about is New Orleans, like that is the only place that was affected by Katrina. Last night I saw a film of Nagin yelling for someone to get down there and help them! I almost threw a lamp at the TV. This racism on the part of the reporters and the black community is starting to turn me into a racist, and I never was before!! Good job folks.
Whenever you start feeling that way, just remember the likes of Thomas Sowell and Adam West and Joseph Stalin and Ted Bundy.
Race has nothing to do with character. The NAACP and the congressional black caucus are just organizations filled with rotten people. Their race has nothing to do with it.
Don’t let the dividers win. Don’t give them even an inch of ground.
Beck revised and extended his remarks. The One is only a racist in the theological sense because of his belief in liberation theology. He is pushing “Marxism disguised as religion.” Chew on that for a while.
Turned on the tv, it was tuned to CNN and did not change the channel quickly enough. What a laugh. Anderson Cooper was talking about how the poor construction and maintenance caused the levies to fail, then went right in to how today they are being built well. Why not tell the truth Coop, talk about how the money the federal government gave NO for the levies was spent on the gambling industry. I am so sick of the LSM, c’mon Anderson, pretend like the truth is a uber hot, studly dude that is going to carry you away in a loving embrace…. Get good with the truth coop.