Apparently, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there has been a difference in the vocabulary used when describing the manner in which its white and its black victims gather supplies. Apparently, while blacks loot their supplies, whites find them.

Here's a link to a Salon article which discusses this issue.

Also, here are better shots of the pictures.

This points directly at something I've believed for some time: there is an underlying racism in our country which we refuse to admit. After all the civil rights progress we've made in the United States, no one wants to admit that we've only kept people from publicly expressing racism, not from feeling it.

Now, instead of pouring out explicitly, racism seeps in innocuously, so that if you aren't paying attention, you don't notice. It's gone underground, it's gone into the subconscious, but it's still there.

I was talking with someone about the chaos going on in New Orleans, and she leaned close to me to whisper, as if she were giving me secret information: "all the looting and lawlessness in New Orleans, it's 'cause of all the blacks."

Well, you know what? I went through Hurricane Andrew, which, until Katrina hit New Orleans, was the generally accepted "worst hurricane situation" in the US yet, and South Florida's population is predominantly hispanic and white. And you know what? We had looting and violence, too, and that's with the National Guard being at our doorstep when the hurricane happened, and an immediate outpouring of emergency aid. Thank you George Bush Sr. by the way.

You know what? When you're knee deep in shit and bodies, and you haven't eaten in three or four days, you're going to fucking loot, I don't care what walk of life you're from.

After Hurricane Katrina passed us and turned toward New Orleans, some of us (perhaps 25% of South Florida) lived for four days without electricity. The roads were a mess, you had to wait in lines to get any food at the supermarket (but it was still in abundance), most traffic lights were out, most businesses were closed. And the thin veneer of civility was already washing away here in Miami. People were running through intersections, including those which were working properly, people were pissed, you could feel the frustration and anger.

And we had to survive only sporadic power outages for four days. What do you think our "civilized" hispanic and white upper-middle class population would have done if Andrew had been just a little larger, wetter, and slower? What do you think we would have done thirteen years ago if we were starving, if people were dying around us, if there were so few police officers and doctors that there was nothing they could do?

You know what? We are still racists. We are elitists. We are nation divided by class and income status. And we are hypocrites, because we refuse to admit it.

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