Racism

Wow. Could we be a more racist society?

Yesterday, there were two different photos, almost identical, on Yahoo news.

Each showed one or two people wading through the water in what was New Orleans holding simple, basic food products in their hands. I think it was bread in both cases.

In any case, there were only two substantive differences between the two presentations:

1) In one photo, the people were white, in the other, the people were black.

2) In the photo of white people, the caption read "Two residents wade through chest deep water after finding bread and water from a local grocery store." The caption of the other picture read "A young black man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store."

Now, I'm not in favor of looting, but we have starving people and we have stores whose inventories are going to be ruined anyway. And we don't even know how many of these people will later return to those stores and say "Look, you weren't here, I took this, here's the money I owe you".

But when a white couple takes the food, they're "finding" food to feed their families. When a black person takes the food, he's "looting".

Racism may not be what it once was in this country, but it's still alive and well. These people weren't stealing televisions or jewelry, they're obtaining basic survival necessities in the only way they can.

But when they're white, they're just trying to survive. When they're black, they're stealing.

And our President calls for a zero tolerance policy against anyone who commits crimes related to this disaster.

Any bets that looters will bear the brunt of any enforcement actions, while price gouging oil companies get off scott free? Or that looting will be largely defined not by the action but by skin color?

Liam.