Exiles from a city and from a nation

[GeorgeGist]

Cornel West
Sunday September 11, 2005
The Observer


It takes something as big as Hurricane Katrina and the misery we saw among the poor black people of New Orleans to get America to focus on race and poverty. It happens about once every 30 or 40 years. What we saw unfold in the days after the hurricane was the most naked manifestation of conservative social policy towards the poor, where the message for decades has been: 'You are on your own'. Well, they really were on their own for five days in that Superdome, and it was Darwinism in action - the survival of the fittest. People said: 'It looks like something out of the Third World.' Well, New Orleans was Third World long before the hurricane.

It's not just Katrina, it's povertina. People were quick to call them refugees because they looked as if they were from another country. They are. Exiles in America. Their humanity had been rendered invisible so they were never given high priority when the well-to-do got out and the helicopters came for the few. Almost everyone stuck on rooftops, in the shelters, and dying by the side of the road was poor black.

In the end George Bush has to take responsibility. When Kanye West said the President does not care about black people, he was right, although the effects of his policies are different from what goes on in his soul. You have to distinguish between a racist intent and the racist consequences of his policies. Bush is still a 'frat boy', making jokes and trying to please everyone while the Neanderthals behind him push him more to the right. ...more

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1567247,00.html

[texpatriot2004]

1. Awesome! Great read. Thanks for posting. n/t

[OneBlueSky]

2. "Orphans of Wealth" . . . by Don McLean . . .

There is no time to discuss or debate
what is right, what is wrong for our people.
Time has run out for all those who wait
with bent limbs and minds that are feeble.

And the rain falls and blows through their window
and the snow falls and blows through their door.
And the seasons revolve mid their sounds of starvation.
When the tides rise, they cover the floor.

They come from the north and they come from the south
and they come from the hills and the valleys.
And they're migrants and farmers and miners and humans,
our census neglected to tally.

And the rain falls and blows through their window
and the rain falls and it blows through their door.
And the seasons revolve mid their sounds of starvation.
When the tides rise, they cover the floor.

And they´re African, Mexican, Caucasian, Indian,
hungry and hopeless Americans.
The orphans of wealth and of adequate health,
disowned by this nation they live in.

And with weather worn hands on bread lines they stand,
yet but one more degradation.
And they're treated like tramps while we sell them food stamps
this thriving and prosperous nation.

And the rain falls and blows through their window
and the snow falls and blows through their door.
And the seasons revolve mid their sounds of starvation.
When the tides rise, they cover the floor.

And with roaches and rickets and rats in the thickets,
infested, diseased and decaying.
With rags and no shoes and skin sores that ooze,
by the poisonous pools, they are playing.

In shacks of two rooms that are rotting wood tombs
with corpses breathing inside them.
And we pity their plight as they call in the night
and we do all that we can do to hide them.

And the rain falls and blows through their window
and the snow falls in white drifts that fold
and the tides rise with floods in the nursery.
And a child is crying, he's hungry and cold,
his life has been sold, his young face looks old.
It's the face of America, dying.