Denigrating the needy

[pegkerr]

In this entry here Respectful of Otters muses about the trouble that those who operate from just world hypothesis have with images of undeserved suffering, such as we saw with Katrina. In order to remedy the cognitive dissonance, some resort to tarring the victims of Katrina as deserving the suffering.

Read the entry. Respectful of Otters closes by pointing to a particularly nasty piece on Snopes here. Read it and reflect upon those who insist that racism had absolutely nothing to do with the abysmal response to Katrina. Ugh.

Edited to add: cheshyre has pointed to some excellent posts by Digby on the role of race as related to Katrina, giving examples of Republican retoric, 1, 2, 3 and 4. (You can read the syndicated feed for this blog at digby2). Thanks, cheshyre.

Comments

[windswept.livejournal.com]

Why? Educate me.

[cheshyre]

It's like the old canard about blind men trying to identify an elephant.

[Yeah, I know I'm being purposely vague. My perspective on the situation is just that, my perspective, and I don't want to unfairly characterize the opinions of the other party.

I just feel like I'm seeing a multivariable situation, with classist and racist and other perspectives which can be put together to build a fuller picture of events. And I feel like the other party seems unwilling to acknowledge the existence of one of those variables. But then again, maybe I'm just as blind, and rather than me detecting more parts of the elephant, we're just looking at different parts.

Am I making any sense?

[windswept.livejournal.com]

Yes, definitely. I see it as a classist issue, not racist (more along the lines of Obama's recent comments), but I can understand (sort of? maybe?) people who are committed to a race-based POV. It just seems... unnecessarily divisive. Poverty, we can do something about. It's real. Race is... a construct. It confounds me.

[cheshyre]

Race may be a construct, but IMO there are some people in this country who remain racist and some people in power who may not be racist themselves but exploit racist fears/use racist rhetoric to achieve classist goals.

If you wish to read further, Paul Krugman's latest column goes into how racism has (pardon the pun) colored American perceptions of class.

[W]ho can honestly deny that race is a major reason America treats its poor more harshly than any other advanced country? To put it crudely: a middle-class European, thinking about the poor, says to himself, "There but for the grace of God go I." A middle-class American is all too likely to think, perhaps without admitting it to himself, "Why should I be taxed to support those people?"
Above all, race-based hostility to the idea of helping the poor created an environment in which a political movement hostile to government aid in general could flourish.

Digby has written several excellent posts recently about the role of race as related to Katrina, giving examples from Republican rhetoric: 1, 2, 3, 4.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Thank you for pointing to the Digby posts. They were fascinating.