The logic of racism in the age of US imperialism

[dweller]

By Luciana Bohne

October 6, 2005—Reports of a reign of civilian terror—general and massive
looting, rapes, and other sado-masochistic fantasies—in Katrina's New
Orleans turn out to have been false. So says the New Orleans
Times-Picayune on 26 September: "the vast majority of reported atrocities
committed by evacuees have turned out to be false, or at least unsupported
by any evidence, according to key military, law enforcement, medical and
civilian officials in positions to know."

The "natives" did not go berserk, after all.

I wonder, however, what the media will do to erase the lurid racist images of
sex and violence they have implanted in television viewers' minds. Absolutely
nothing is my guess. When the sympathy of ordinary Americans threatened
to become seditious outrage at the government's criminal irresponsibility, the
plan to demonize the victims went into effect, tapping into long-established
myths of black people as rapists and murderers.

Is the media racist? I would guess not at the vulgar, knee-jerk level of
pathological racism, but "racialist," yes—processing reality through the
unscientific prism of "race." "Racialism" is to racism what "paternalism" is to
sexism: it views the Other as either a victim needing protection or a menace
requiring suppression. The racialist paradigm does not permit regarding the
Other as equal. Pity or fear are the emotional byproducts of racialist thinking,
and both went into effect in New Orleans, but the fear mode won out. It
concocted fantasies of murderous anarchy, which stifled the immediate
impulse of pity.

Yes, the rule of law during this time of Bush's catastrophic capitalism is in
decline (illegal and unconstitutional war against Iraq, Guantanamo detention
of "stateless" people, torture by proxy via renditions, suspension of domestic
civil rights by USA PATRIOT Act, stacking courts with neo-fascist
liberticides, corruption in high places, etc.), but the symptoms of this decline
are not to be found among unruly citizens in New Orleans but among a
greedy business class, misgoverning through an authoritarian-styled
management as though the state were just another corporation, strictly
responsible to investors who funded the selection of the CEO of the nation.

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Media/100605Bohne/100605bohne.html

dp

(Onlinejournal is taking a short break and will resume publishing on or about October 17)

[sadiesworld]

1. Katrina was an opportunity to substitute the black scapegoat

for the illegal immigrant scapegoat. Now the black New Orleaneans (who are finished with the slavery thing) are "the enemy" instead of the latino illegal immigrants (who provide cheap labor). I'm not sure it's working too well--the rightwingers hate both.

[Erika]

2. I have been sickened by Rightwingers exploiting the LA blacks

by saying the Mississippians and Alabama whites stood up to the occasion and began rebuilding while the Louisiana blacks just whined to the government for help. I am infuriated. New Orleans was turned into a disaster with over a hundred thousand homes under water...for days. This was NOT the case in Mississippi and Alabama. The waters came in and then within hours receded. Racism among the GOP is very much alive.

[bliss_eternal]

3. Good points!

I am guessing that the GOP'ers that made these rather skewed observations didn't notice that there were some caucasians and other ethnicities that were also in LA, that suffered loss of their homes.

According to them, were they also waiting for handouts? From where I sit, many seemed to old, sick and disabled to leave or to 'stand up to the occasion.'

Nice compassion, GOP!

Racist? Oh yeah, I think so. And sexist, ageist, among other things.