|
Today's
Stories
October 29
/ 30, 2005
Peter Linebaugh
The
Wedges of Hephaestus
October 28,
2005
Jared Bernstein
Inflation
Up; Wages Down: Fastest Decline in Wages on Record
Virginia Tilley
Embracing
the Anti-Aparthied Movement in Israel/Palestine
Phil Gasper
The
Race to Execute Tookie Williams
Jennifer Matsui
It's Mardi Graft Time!
Manual Garcia,
Jr.
Is the US Really Against Torture?
Monica Benderman
In the Name of Justice
Jason Leopold
Fitzgerald
Focuses on the Forgeries
Dave Lindorff
Suddenly, Bush Endorses Right of Fair Trials
Otober 27, 2005
Saul Landau
The
Scandal Isn't the Leak, But the Illegal War
Stuart Hodkinson
Bono
and Geldoff: "We Saved Africa" Oh No, They Didn't!
Ingmar Lee
Stop
the Troops!: No Glory or Honor in Iraq
Lila Rajiva
License
to Bill: Gates Does India
Ilan Pappe
The
Last Moment of Hope
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Waiting for Fitzgerald
Michael Donnelly
Look Who's Talking Now: the GOP on Perjury
Ron Jacobs
Escape the Weight of Your Corporate Logo
Cockburn / St. Clair
White House in Meltdown
October 26,
2005
Kathy Kelly
For
Whom They Toll
Gary Leupp
Dialectics
of the Plame Affair
Mike Marqusee
Empire of Denial
Eric Ruder
War Crimes in Afghanistan
Patrick Cockburn
Iraq: a Constitutionally Divided Nation
Joshua Frank
Fitzgerald v. the Bushies: Hold Your Elation in Check
J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
The Legacy of Rosa Parks
Website of
the Day
Decent Work in America: the 2005 Work Environment Index
October 25,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Condi
and Syrian Regime Change: Could Somebody Recommend a President?
Ken Sengupta / Patrick Cockburn
Attack on the Palestine Hotel
Conn Hallinan
Sleight of Hand: Iran, India and the US
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Pulling the Court Strings
Jackie Corr
Barbara Bush: Poster Gorgon of the Houston Astros
Robert Day
Talk to Strangers
John Sugg
Judith
Miller and Me
October 24,
2005
Dave Lindorff
Revoke
Judy Miller's Pulitzer
Michael Donnelly
Shades of Iran/contra
Patrick Cockburn
A Nation Stands on Trial
Mike Whitney
Apres Rove
Norman Solomon
Iraq is Not Vietnam, But...
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
US
Foreign Policy and Palestine
October 22
/ 23, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
When
Divas Collide: Maureen Dowd v. Judy Miller
Billy Sothern
Letter
from the Circle Bar, New Orleans
Saul Landau
Bush, an Assessment
Ralph Nader
An
Open Letter to Bush on Harriet Miers
Behrooz Ghamari
Whose Justice Does Saddam's Trial Serve?
Brian Cloughley
Bush the Strategist: Pyrrhus Without a Victory?
Diana Barahona
Venezuela's National Workers' Union
Fred Gardner
Dershowitzed!
Lee Sustar
What the War on Terror is Really About
Patrick Cockburn
Murder of Saddam Trial Defense Lawyer
Laura Carlsen
Mexico City Seamstresses Recall 1985 Quake
James Petras
China Bashing and the Loss of US Competitiveness
Joshua Frank
Invading Iran: Who is to Stop Them?
Manuel Garcia,
Jr.
Disasters are Us
Michelle Bollinger
When Abortion Was Illegal
Missy Comley
Beattie
CSI: Iraq
Kona Lowell
Intelligent Design: Making High School Fun
Ben Tripp
Tanks for the Memories
Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening To This Week
Poets' Basement
Albert and Engel
Website of
the Day
Indictment Watch
October 21,
2005
Dave Lindorff
The
Democrats' Abortion Hypocrisy
Winslow T. Wheeler
Paying for Their Mistakes: Incompetence, Deception and the Defense
Budget
Col. Dan Smith
The Destruction of the National Guard
Norman Solomon
Media at Crossroads: 25 Years After Reagan's Triumph
Madis Senner
Abusing Katrina
Michael Donnelly
Richard
Pombo: DeLay in Cowboy Boots
October 20, 2005
Dave Lindorff
Impeachment
Comes to NYC
Ray McGovern
16
Fatal Words: Cheney's Chickens Come Home to Roost
Jeremy Brecher
/
Brendan Smith
Attack Syria? Invade Iran?: By What Constitutional Right?
Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Refuses to Recognize Court
Kevin Zeese
Was the Iraqi Constitution Vote Fixed?
Ross Eisenbrey
Millions Would Lose Pay and Protections Under Enzi Amendment
Randy Shields
James McMurtry Makes It in Dayton
Justine Davidson
Prosecuting Bush in Canada for Torture: a Small Victory
After Lucas
Cranach
Judy and Holofernes
Joe Allen
The
Scandalous History of the Red Cross
October 19,
2005
Christopher Reed
Koizumi and the Rape of Nanking
Stephen Soldz
Bush
and Avian Flu: the Excuses Begin to Fly
Chet Richards
War
and Intelligence
Patrick Cockburn
Saddam on Trial
Scott Richard
Lyons
Multicultural
Columbus?
Ralph Nader
An Interview with Rev. William Sloane Coffin
Website of
the Day
Shocking Video: Why Birds May Be Taking Viral Vengeance on Humans
October 18,
2005
Chet Flippo
Merle
Haggard: "Let's Get Out of Iraq"
Ron Jacobs
Dual Devotions: the Catholic Church and the US Flag
Keeanga-Yamahtta
Taylor
A Tale of Two Cities: From DC to Toledo
Dave Lindorff
Judy Miller: Little Miss Run Amok
Virginia Rodino
A Winter Patriot: Reflections on the Antiwar Movement
Thomas Healy
The Weather in Goshen: Still Radical After All These Years
Ralph Nader
A New New Orleans
Stephen Lendman
The Sorrows of Haiti
Patrick Cockburn
On the Eve of Saddam's Trial: a Divided Iraq
October 17,
2005
Peter Linebaugh
Spinoza
and the Black Limos
Norman Solomon
Judith Miller, the Fourth Estate and the Warfare State
Cockburn /
Sengupta
"If
the Sunnis Don't Like It, That's Their Problem"
Mike Whitney
Miller's Confession: Last Gasp Before Indictments?
Uri Avnery
Iraq Now: What Awaits Samira?
Harold Pinter
Torture & Misery in the Name of Freedom
Website of
the Day
Al Joudi v. Bush
October 15
/ 16, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ayatollahs
of the Apocalypse
Patrick Cockburn
"This Constitution Won't Get Me a Job"
Saul Landau
Two Terrorists and a Lush: Osama, Posada and Bush's Drinking
Neve Gordon
"Beyond Chutzpah": Exposing Grave Moral Distortions
Moshe Adler
Poverty in New York City
Christopher Brauchli
Lynndie England's Burden
Diane Farsetta
The Emperor Doesn't Disclose: the Fight Against Fake News
Sam Husseini
Notes on Current Reporting About Judith Miller
Monica Benderman
From Chaos to Conscience to Peace
Mickey Z.
POW Abuse by US: Nothing New Going On Here
Douglas C.
Smyth
George W. Bush, the Honorius of Our Time
Lee Sustar
Will Delphi Bust the UAW?
Fred Gardner
Cannabinoids Arrive in Realm of Established Fact
Elizabeth Schulte
A Former Panther's Georgia Campaign: an Interview with Elaine
Brown
Joshua Frank
Will the Democrats Save Harriet Miers?
David Vest
Down with Formalism! Up with Values!
Ben Tripp
Epistle II: the Reawakenign
Poets Basement
Engel, Albert, Ford and Louise
Website of
the Weekend
The
Hidden Canyon
October 14,
2005
Farrah Hassen
A
Somber Ramadan in Syria
Ron Jacobs
The
Black Panthers: They Haven't Forgotten; Neither Should We
Sasha Kramer
USAID
and Haiti: the Friendly Face of Imperialism?
Katrina Yeaw
The Student Struggle in Italy
Nicole Colson
Bird Flu: Militarizing Health Care
Raúl Zibechi
Survival and Existence in El Alto
Nikolas Kozloff
Hugo
Chávez and the Politics of Race
Website of the Day
LA Filmmakers Cooperative
October 13, 2005
Jeremy Scahill
Mr.
Bush Goes to Tikrit (Sort Of)
Jeff Birkenstein
A
Thoreau for Our Time: Why Cindy Sheehan Matters
Brendan Smith / Jeremy Brecher
Harriet Miers: Bush or the Constitution?
Stan Cox
Did You Know This About Iraq?
Anis Memon
The Curious Case of Russ Feingold
Gary Leupp
Miller, Libby and the June Notes
Dave Zirin
A Tribute to August Wilson
Matthew Koehler
America's Endangered Forests
Werther
The
Two-Headed Monster
Website of
the Day
Hurricane Song
October 12, 2005
Omar Waraich
Britain
and the Quake: Mean and Stingy
William Cook
Voices
Behind the Entombment Wall
Phil Gasper
Countdown
to a Legal Lynching
Dave Lindorff
Impeachment Now and Then: Clinton, Bush and the Polls
Matt Vidal
Capital, Power and Class
John Gautreaux
New Orleans will Never be the Same
Diana Johnstone
Srebrenica
Revisited: Using War as an Excuse for War
Mark Weisbrot
The IMF Has Lost Its Influence
Brian J. Foley
Gitmo Tribunals Endanger Public Safety
Website of
the Day
Columbus Day Lies
October 11,
2005
Roger Morris
/ Steve Schmidt
Strategic
Demands of the 21st Century
Lila Rajiva
Live from New Orleans: Abu Ghraib
Bill Quigley
New
Orleans: Leaving the Poor Behind Again
Paul Craig Roberts
Natural Born Liars
Dave Lindorff
Recruiters in Schools: No Lie Left Untried
Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Suspect Thy Neighbor
Mitchel Cohen
Showdown at Chuck E. Cheese
Tariq Ali
Pakistan will Never Forget This Horror
Website of
the Day
L'Heure Americaine
October 10,
2005
Cindy and Craig
Corrie
Rachel's
Words Live
Joshua Frank
Washington's War Dems
Gideon Levy
The Beautiful Life Without Arafat
Alan Wallis
The Fight for Free Speech at Union Square
Mickey Z.
In Defense of Liars
CounterPunch News Service
Vermont Independence Convention
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Police State is Closer Than You Think
Website of the Day
Dylan's Chronicles
October 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Rhetoric
and Reality in the Business of Getting Rid of Black People
Ralph Nader
Katrina
and the Growls of Greed
Jennifer Van Bergen
New American Law: Legal Strategies in the Dharfir Case
Saul Landau
An Oily Religious Dream
Jeff Halper
Setting Up Abbas
Lenni Brenner
The Millions More Movement and Zionism
Nikolas Kozloff
Bird Flu and Bush
Brian Cloughley
Training Soldiers in Iraq
Alice Slater
A Nobel Prize for Chernobyl?
John Gautreaux
A View from Cajun Country
Fred Gardner
Does the Controlled Substances Act Mean What It Says?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Leveethan Approach
M.G. Piety
Rot in the Ivory Tower: Collusion, Cover-Up and Kierkegaard
Tom Gorman
The Hitchens Doctrine
Mike Whitney
Bunker Days with George
Aseem Shrivastava
Beyond the Wasteland: Lessons from Afghanistan
Ben Tripp
Religion, an Epistle
Poets' Basement
Albert, Engel and Ford
October 7,
2005
Larry Johnson
The
Plame Case: the Real Issues
Will Youmans
Why
Do We Hate Our Freedom? Recruiters and Thugs on Campus
Dave Lindorff
Bird Flu: Evolution or Intelligent Design?
Judith Scherr
Haiti's Children's Prison
Russell D. Hoffman
Nukes for Peace, Revisited?: Nobel Prize Debacle
Jared Bernstein
Katrina and Jobs
Jennifer Van
Bergen
New
American Law: the Case of Dr. Dhafir
Website of
the Day
FBI Witchhunt
October 6, 2005
P. Sainath
"Take
That, Tom Friedman": Indian Masses Reject NYT's Neoliberal
Idol Again
Scott Parkin
When Antiwar Activists Get Mugged
Paul Craig
Roberts
Blundering
into Syria
Andréa Schmidt
Haiti's Biometric Elections: a High-Tech Experiment in Exclusion
Dave Lindorff
Easy
Money in the Big Easy
Joshua Frank
In Defense of Lew Rockwell
M. Junaid Alam
Jackboots at George Mason
Matthew Koehler
Cock and Bull on the Bitterroot
Robert Pollin
Is
the Dollar Still Falling?
October 5,
2005
Heather Gray
Militarization is Not an Answer for
Reconstruction: the Case of the Philippines
Robert Jensen
Is
Bush a Racist?
Ramzy Baroud
Bush's Final Choice: America or
the Empire
Col. Dan Smith
Keeping Promises to Iraq: "Everything
is Bad"
Dave Zirin
Barry
Bonds Laughs Last
Paul Craig Roberts
Liberal Guilt? How the Neocons
Took Over
Alan Maass
Doing
the Right Wing's Dirty Work
October 4, 2005
Nikolas Kozloff
Shocking the Two Party System:
a Political Opportunity for Sheehan and the Antiwar Mvt.
Mike Roselle
Houston,
You've Got a Problem
Joshua Frank
The Scoop on Harriet Miers
John Chuckman
War
Porn: What the Gruesome Images Say
Alan Farago
Storm Warning for Jeb: Developers,
Hurricanes and the Keys
Mickey Z.
An
Interview with Thaddeus Rutkowski
Christine & Ethan Rose
Home Depot Exploits Hurricane Victims
Gary Leupp
An
Earlier Empire's War on Iraq: a Lesson from Roman History
Website of the Day
Rodney
Crowell on Bob Dylan
October 3,
2005
Vijay Prashad
Desperation at Holyoke
Paul Craig
Roberts
Condi
Rice: Gunslinger
Joshua Frank
An Interview with Cindy Sheehan
Seth Sandronsky
The
Hiring Crisis for Black Teens
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Great Green Scare
|
Weekend Edition
October 29 / 30, 2005
Katrina,
Conservative Myth-Making and the Media
Framing the Poor
By TIM WISE
During
the flooding of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina,
many a voice praised the media for its supposedly aggressive
coverage. The fact that Anderson Cooper cried on camera, or that
Geraldo evinced outrage (imagine that), or that even Fox's Shepard
Smith waxed indignant at the suffering in the streets, was taken
as evidence of some newfound courage on the part of the press.
Standing up to FEMA's Mike
Brown, and making him appear every bit as incompetent as he was
-- a task about as difficult as making Paris Hilton look underfed
-- inspired plaudits for any number of network anchors and reporters
in the field. So too, Cooper's upbraiding of an utterly hapless
Mary Landrieu, she of the U.S. Senate, just to show that both
parties were fair game in this brave new world of independent
media, no longer willing to be led around by the neck on a leash,
as it had been with, say, Iraq, for starters.
But just as surely as the media
went after those in positions of power, and sought to expose
them as witless in all respects, it was even more adept at framing
(pun very much intended) low-income black folks in the streets
of New Orleans as a collection of deviant criminals. In other
words, the more things changed, the more they ultimately stayed
the same, with the press presenting images of the desperate and
left behind that reinforce negative and racist stereotypes, to
the utter exclusion of accuracy and fair-mindedness.
Case in point, the constant
repetition of the same five or six video loops of so-called looters.
The fact that most of these were taking water, food and medicine
didn't seem to matter to camerapersons or, ultimately, a viewing
public quick to condemn what they saw. That the relative paucity
of such video suggests theft wasn't particularly representative
of the crowds on Canal Street -- after all, if looting had been
that common, there would have been more than the same half-dozen
clips to present -- also mattered not it appears.
An even better case in point,
the repetition of unfounded rumors -- later proven false -- to
the effect that Children's Hospital had been raided by drug addicts
looking for a fix; or that gang rapes were occurring in the Superdome
or Convention Center, or that babies were being molested and
then having their throats slit, only to be stuffed like trash
in abandoned freezers and garbage cans. False, false and false;
and for none of these stories had there ever been a first hand
witness who had actually seen any of the supposed carnage taking
place.
Or consider the reports of
thugs shooting on first aid helicopters: fact is, there are no
first hand witnesses who claim they saw anyone shoot at the helicopters,
as if hoping to bring them down or harm relief workers. Rather,
those who were actually there, and saw the gunfire in question,
report that it was intended to get the attention of the helicopters,
which seemed to be repeatedly passing people by, looking at the
catastrophic conditions, but refusing to land and save people
in most instances. Perhaps those in the air didn't see those
on the ground? Or perhaps they didn't understand the magnitude
of the suffering below them? Either way, the gunfire was a desperate
attempt to get people to take things seriously and do their jobs:
perhaps not the best way to get attention, but hardly the act
of mindless, violent thugs aiming indiscriminately at everyone
in sight, as reports made it seem.
Yet the media, feeling no need
to find witnesses or to verify claims of black deviance (because,
after all, what's not to believe?) simply went along. The result?
Rescue efforts were delayed because rescue workers had been scared
for their lives by a press that led them to think New Orleans
was a war zone; the Governor and Mayor actually told law enforcement
to stop saving lives and start arresting and shooting lawbreakers
on sight; and the public, which rarely needs reasons to think
the worst of poor black people, found its stereotypes confirmed.
Not only whites, it should be pointed out, but black folks too,
like Mayor Nagin and his crony police chief Eddie Compass, both
of whom apparently think so little of their own people that they
too assumed the stories were true, in spite of no evidence, and
repeated the charges on national TV.
Within just a few days, urban
legends began zipping around the Internet, in the form of e-mails
recounting utterly fabricated events, but all of them -- however
false -- fit perfectly within the narrative developed by the
media during the catastrophe.
First there was the one about
the crack dealer who refused to be evacuated to a hospital because
he wouldn't be able to sell his wares there; then there was the
one about the thugs (black and poor of course) who destroyed
a rest area on the Louisiana/Texas border, during a stop on the
way to Houston, even urinating on the walls to show their disregard
for civilized norms of behavior; then there was the one from
the guy claiming to have volunteered at the Astrodome to feed
and help evacuees, all to be shocked by how ungrateful they were--supposedly
demanding beer, liquor, cigarettes and four-star restaurant meals.
That hundreds of others refuted these nonsensical claims, and
noted how unbelievably gracious the evacuees had been did nothing
to damper the enthusiasm with which the lies were circulated.
And in each case, the authors
of these fantasies made sure to throw in something about how
racist the blacks were (calling white aid workers "crackers"
and "honkies" of course), and ending with the admonition
that those displaced by Katrina deserved no respect or assistance,
seeing as how they were a bunch of spoiled brats who should be
left to their own devices. In other words, no need to be compassionate,
no need to contribute to relief funds, and certainly no need
to challenge one's already negative views towards the kinds of
people left behind in the flood. They had, ultimately, gotten
what they deserved.
Though the mainstream media
hadn't created these phony and vicious stories (and indeed, one
has to wonder what kind of evil mind and heart would have done
so), it is certainly true that they created the conditions that
made such tripe believable to a lot of people. Had the media
focused less on looters and supposed gang raping murderers, and
more on the efforts by thousands to help one another in the midst
of hellish conditions -- stories that are only trickling out
in the corporate press, but which those who lived through them
have been trying to get told via their own accounts from the
flood zone -- it would have been impossible for such vile trash
as this to have gained traction. But once the climate had been
created and the frame set -- one that said, these are bad people,
who do bad things -- it took no effort at all for racists to
concoct lies and peddle those to a willing and gullible public
that never seems to challenge stories of black perfidy, so easily
do they fit within their pre-existing racist biases in the first
place.
Which brings us to the other
big lie told about the poor in New Orleans: one that has yet
to be addressed in the media, despite how easily it can be disproved
by a mere five minutes worth of research. It is one repeated
daily for the past eight weeks by conservative talk show hosts
and columnists, and one to which I am exposed many times a day
in my email inbox, thanks to the efforts of right wing louts
without the seeming desire to do their homework. Namely, it is
the argument that the reason 130,000 poor black folks were unable
to escape the flooding was because they had grown dependent on
the government to save them, thanks to the "welfare state,"
and that was why they lacked the money and cars to get out before
disaster struck.
In other words, liberal social
policy had rendered the black poor unable or unwilling to work,
content to collect a government check, and thus, had made them
incapable of saving themselves. This lie -- and it is just that,
not an exaggeration or simplification or overstatement, but a
flat-out falsehood -- has been parroted by the likes of Rush
Limbaugh, Shawn Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Charles Murray (of
"Bell Curve" fame), not to mention such viciously self-loathing
black conservatives as Star Parker, John McWhorter and the Rev.
Jesse Lee Peterson, all despite the lack of evidence to sustain
it, and the amazing amount of evidence, both contemporary and
historical, to refute it.
But of course the media, having
long ago decided not to challenge the mainstream public's view
of folks on welfare -- and indeed to collaborate with the framing
of such persons by politicians of both major parties -- has done
nothing to set the record straight, suggesting either that they
are incredibly inept at research, or just as incredibly craven
in their attitudes towards the poorest of this nation's citizens.
But the facts, however unsettling
they may be for conservative mythmakers, are clear.
To begin with, as of 2004,
according to the Census Bureau, there were only 4600 households
in all of New Orleans receiving cash welfare from the nation's
principal aid program, TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families,
formerly Aid to Families With Dependent Children, or AFDC). That
is not a misprint: 4600 out of a total of 130,000 households
in the black community alone. Which means that even if every
welfare receiving household in Orleans Parish had been black
(which was not in fact the case), this would have represented
only a little more than four percent of black households in the
city.
According to the same Census
data, the average household size in a welfare receiving family
in New Orleans is the same as the citywide average for non-recipients:
roughly 3.5 persons. So the number of individuals receiving welfare
in New Orleans, by the time of Katrina would have been about
16,000.
Thus, even if we assume that
all of the 130,000 persons left behind were poor, and that no
persons receiving welfare managed to escape before the flooding
with friends or family, this would mean that at most, perhaps
twelve percent of the persons left behind (and whose faces we
may have been seeing on national TV) would have been welfare
recipients at all, let alone persons who had been rendered dependent
on such benefits for long periods of time.
And speaking of dependence,
or the notion that the city's welfare recipients had grown content
to sit back and collect government checks instead of doing for
self, this hardly seems likely when you consider that the average
annual income received from TANF, for those small numbers actually
getting any such benefits at all, was only a little more than
$2,800 per year, in New Orleans prior to the catastrophe.
Indeed, such paltry amounts
explain why most of the poor in New Orleans, far from being happy
to receive so-called handouts, work whenever they can find steady
employment, which admittedly, is not often the case.
For example, in the ninety-eight
percent black and forty percent poor Lower Ninth Ward, one of
the hardest hit communities (and one about which many negative
things were said in terms of so-called welfare dependence), seventy-one
percent of families prior to the flooding reported income from
paid employment, while only eight percent received income from
cash welfare. In other words, folks in this community were almost
nine times more likely to earn their pay than to receive government
benefits. Forty percent of workers from the community worked
full-time, and the average commute time for Ninth Ward workers
was over 45 minutes each day, suggesting that the work ethic
was quite common to the folks who lived there, irrespective of
commonly held and utterly false stereotypes.
Even food stamps -- a program
with much more lenient terms and where even the near poor can
often qualify for minimal benefits -- were only received by eleven
percent of New Orleans households as of last year: hardly indicative
of a general mindset of welfare entitlement. As for public housing,
far from being the location of residence for most poor blacks
in New Orleans -- let alone those in the streets in the wake
of Katrina -- fewer than 20,000 people lived in such units at
the time of the flooding: this representing no more than five
percent of black New Orleanians. In the Lower Ninth Ward, for
example, few lived in public housing and nearly six in ten families
owned their own homes.
Even in the city's poorest
communities, like the Iberville or Lafitte housing developments,
or parts of Central City, at least a third, and often a majority
of households report income from paid employment. What's more,
tenants in the B.W. Cooper development have been managing their
own housing for years, teaching job and leadership skills to
the persons who live there.
Likewise, in the mid-90s, several
public housing developments participated in a national Jobs Program,
funded by the Annie B. Casey Foundation: a successful effort
that matched low-income black residents with businesses looking
for employees. In the former St. Thomas development -- the first
public housing "project" funded by the federal government
under the Roosevelt Administration -- residents had started their
own coffee shop and bookstore, and had created innovative teen
pregnancy prevention and safe sex initiatives.
When St. Thomas was torn down
a few years ago, residents were told there would be mixed-use
economic development in its place, and although they mourned
for the loss of their neighborhood, many looked forward to participating
actively in the economic lifeblood of the community. Then the
city reneged on its promises and offered the land to Wal-Mart,
which then placed a superstore on the property--the very store
whose gun supply was looted during the flooding (an ironic turn
of events if ever there was one). Poor folks wanted economic
opportunity and jobs; the city's elite (black and white alike)
gave them a gun supply shop.
Bottom line: the stereotype
of poor blacks in New Orleans (and elsewhere) as lazy and dependent
on government is false. In Louisiana, it should be noted that
only a very small share of those receiving TANF benefits, and
AFDC before that, are able-bodied adults. Indeed, even prior
to welfare reform, only eleven percent of those receiving AFDC
in the state were able-bodied adults who did no work: the rest
were vulnerable children, the elderly, the disabled, or adults
who were already working (mostly part-time), but earned too little
to come off assistance.
It should also be noted that
even when persons do receive so-called welfare, there is still
a predicate to doing so: one that is rarely explored, but is
simply assumed to be personal incompetence, bad choice-making,
laziness or other personal pathologies. So, for example, we are
to believe that for those who live in public housing, it was
their own lack of initiative or willingness to take personal
responsibility for their lives that rendered them so vulnerable
to the likes of Hurricane Katrina and the collapse of the city's
levees.
Yet what this commonly-repeated
claim ignores is what came before folks ended up in public housing,
in overcrowded communities, with concentrated levels of extreme
poverty; and what came before had nothing to do with the welfare
state, or liberal social policy more generally. Rather, what
happened was the deliberate and calculated destruction of the
inner-city in the name of economic "development" (which
benefited only the elite) and to meet the needs of middle-class
and above whites.
So, for example, consider the
Treme (pronounced truh-may): the oldest free black neighborhood
in the United States, home to Congo Square and Louis Armstrong
Park. Located on the outer edge of the French Quarter and Central
Business District, the Treme is more than ninety percent black
and over half of its residents are poor, when you include those
in the Iberville and Lafitte housing developments. Though it
had long been a lower-income community, with the attendant issues
that often emerge in such spaces, the Treme had also been, for
the most part, functional. It was the site of dozens of successful
black-owned businesses, and hundreds of stable middle-class families,
where few lived in the so-called projects. The same was true
for the 7th Ward: the base of the city's old-line Creole community.
But beginning in the early
1960s, the city of New Orleans, as with every major city in the
United States, began taking federal funds to extend interstate
highways through their urban centers, which meant the heart of
those places black communities. In New Orleans, plans to extend
the interstate through the French Quarter met with stiff opposition
from affluent (and mostly white) historic preservationists and
business owners. Once their political clout was deployed so as
to block construction through the main tourist artery, planners
opted to take the I-10 through the Treme and 7th Ward, whose
lower income and black residents lacked the power to stop their
property from being destroyed in the name of progress.
It was a story repeated throughout
the U.S. during this time: by the mid-1960s, interstate construction
in urban areas was destroying roughly 37,000 residences annually;
this, in addition to the 40,000 more that were being torn down
each year in the name of "urban renewal," which translated
into the building of shopping malls, office parks and parking
lots. By 1969, nearly 70,000 homes, mostly occupied by blacks
and Latinos, were being destroyed for the interstate program
alone, in virtually every medium and large city in the country.
Although some had argued for
financial assistance to help relocate the low-income families
displaced by this process, rarely did such help materialize.
Indeed, less than ten percent of those displaced by urban renewal
had new single-resident occupancy housing to go to afterward:
instead, they had to double up with relatives in small, crowded
apartments, or move into public housing projects, which became
something akin to concentration camps for the poorest and most
vulnerable citizens of the nation.
These policies, known euphemistically
as "slum clearance" by those who implemented and supported
them, actuallycreated slums, in places where previously had been
low-income, but largely working class and stable communities.
In New Orleans, this also extended to the Central Business District,
including the very land where the now infamous Superdome sits.
Beginning in 1971, construction
began on the facility, on which ground had previously existed
yet another mostly black and largely low-income and working class
neighborhood. But in a contest between the needs and lives of
those New Orleanians on the one hand, and the mere wants of wealthy
developers, concert promoters, the New Orleans Saints and Tulane
University boosters on the other (the latter of which wanted
to move their pathetic team's games there, away from the old
and decrepit Sugar Bowl), which side can we guess, ultimately
prevailed? And so the Dome was completed, in 1975, at a public
cost of tens of millions of dollars, and the loss of yet another
patch of homesteads for the city's black majority.
All of this "slum clearance,"
it should be noted, was done for the benefit of whites, and not
only the rich developers. Indeed, the primary reason for the
interstate highway program was to help facilitate daily movement
from the cities where most people still worked, to the suburbs,
where large numbers were beginning to live. But of course, it
was only whites who could live there in most cases. Blacks were
still subject to regular discrimination in housing (indeed, most
types of housing bias weren't even illegal until 1968), and had
been largely unable to take advantage of the government's FHA
and VA home loans for the first 30 years of their existence,
thanks to racially discriminatory lending criteria built into
this government program.
So while nearly 40 percent
of white mortgages were being written on the extremely favorable
FHA and VA terms by the early 1960s, (making home ownership possible
for some 15-20 million white families who wouldn't have otherwise
been able to own their own place), virtually no blacks had access
to this form of economic opportunity. To then tear down black
neighborhoods so as to build highways that would help whites
get to their new and growing communities (like Bill O'Reilly's
boyhood Levittown), was an especially pernicious and racist combination
of anti-black neglect and white racial preference.
Beyond housing issues, even
regular "welfare" receipt is something predicated on
history: specifically the history of low-wage employment and
inadequate job opportunities, particularly in urban centers.
One study from Harlem in the 1990s, found that for every job
opening in the area, there were as many as fourteen people looking
for work. Nationally, data has long suggested that there are
between 7-10 people out of work at any given time, for every
above-poverty wage job opening. In other words, there is not
enough opportunity in the modern American economy, irrespective
of the claims made by conservatives and believed by millions.
In fact, it has long been the
official monetary policy of the United States, under the leadership
of the Federal Reserve, to raise interest rates whenever unemployment
drops "too low," and suddenly the nation is faced with
having too many people working. The fear is that too many people
working will tighten the labor market, thereby pushing up wages,
and then causing a spike in prices, to the detriment of economic
well being. By raising the cost of borrowing money, the Fed hopes
to cool off business expansion (and thus any attendant and related
hiring sprees), and thereby, hold inflation in check.
Putting aside the validity
(or lack thereof) of this particular theory, the result of such
thinking should be obvious, especially when it is regularly employed
to maintain unemployment at around four percent by raising interest
rates whenever joblessness drops below that level: namely, it
means that millions of people will be out of work at any given
time, not because they are lazy, and certainly not because government
handouts appear so luxurious to them; but rather, because it
is desired by the government and the nation's economic policymakers
that they be out of work.
Indeed, since the official
unemployment rate fails to count all who are jobless, such as
those who have grown so discouraged by their prospects that they've
simply stopped looking (or those who are near jobless, able to
pull down only a few hours of work each week, but who are still
considered fully employed for the sake of the data), administering
monetary policy this way results in as many as 10-12 million
people being out of work or seriously underemployed at any given
time. They and their dependents will then be (surprise, surprise)
poor, and require some type of assistance so as to survive. None
of this is a reflection on the values of the poor themselves,
though it speaks volumes about the values of the rich who have
supported this kind of policy for decades.
But of course, in a media culture
incapable of looking deeper than the next 30-second, 100-word
soundbite, none of this matters. Indeed, most reporters, news
anchors, or journalists of any stripe would be unlikely to even
know any of this in the first place. All that matters is the
here and now: no need for context, background, or history. And
so they give us poor people, stealing from stores, carless, penniless
and homeless: how they became poor and why they stayed that way
doesn't matter, apparently. And by remaining silent on that issue,
the mainstream press leaves venal ideologues to fill in the blanks,
for an eager public all too willing to believe the worst about
people who, for the most part, none of them have ever met.
Thus do we repeatedly plant
the seeds for each new round of victim blaming, poor-folks bashing
and racism, all the while thinking that just because Anderson
Cooper cried on camera and Fox momentarily turned on Bush (but
only for a nanosecond), the Earth's center of gravity moved.
In fact, just as with the aftermath
of 9/11, and quite contrary to conventional wisdom, nothing at
all has changed.
Tim Wise is the author of two new books: White
Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Soft
Skull Press, 2005), and Affirmative
Action: Racial Preference in Black and White (Routledge:
2005). He can be reached at: timjwise@msn.com
|
Coming in the Fall
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
Click Here to Advance Order Philosopher
Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz
WHAT'S
INSIDE
Grand
Theft Pentagon:
Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror
by Jeffrey St. Clair
|
