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Astounding.
Once again conservatism's inherent intellectual laziness rears its ugly head.
While I don't think all conservatives are racial zealots, I think a lot of them privately are more racist than the majority would care to admit.
Arthur Silbar, Power Of Narrative...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, S[ean] 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 at udes 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.
...
[F]olks 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.
Wise offers additional evidence that undercuts these commonly believed myths. He then moves on to the subject of public housing developments. It is here that Wise provides critical facts that are barely known. In the wake of Katrina, many commentators of the Charles Murray kind would have had us believe that public housing is the root of all evil. Once again, this is a simple story -- and a false one.
In fact, the reality, including the relevant history, is much more complex:
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. ...
Astounding.
Once again conservatism's inherent intellectual laziness rears its ugly head.
While I don't think all conservatives are racial zealots, I think a lot of them privately are more racist than the majority would care to admit.
according to the Census bureau quickfacts, 1/3 of NO population lived below the poverty line. There were 470K peole in NO. 130K were stuck in the after math. SOunds pretty accurate to me that most that were below the poverty line were the victims stuck there.http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/22/2255000.html
What not only conservatives saw was the dependence of the people of new orleans to liberal politicians. Many of the people in new orleans couldnt get out becuase they had no transportation. Many of them were from the ninth ward. They elected liberals to bail them out and protect them and it was miserable.
I also had a difficult time looking for TANF stats online according to the Census bureau. Can someone post the link.
Did you read the article? Only 16,000 received government assistance. Living in poverty is a real issue for many hard-working Americans, especially in the African-American community. To dismiss their efforts to improve their quality of life as merely more of the same 'dependence on liberals' is insulting.
Apparently the difference between what is defined as "poverty" by the US government and recieving Federal Welfare Assistance is lost on some people.
Or some people just naturally assume that everyone living in poverty must be receiving some sort of government assistance.
I harken back to the classic Onion article (available only in archives now) - "Millions of Americans Freed from Poverty by Redefinition of Line"
Classic Onion:
Here's mine:
Thousands freed from the Grasps of Poverty by Hurricane Katrina!
Yup.
The war on the poor continues...
As many have begun to notice, while President Bush was speaking nice words about the effects of racism and poverty on those who became Katrina’s victims, Republicans in the administration and Congress were preparing to use the tragedy as an opportunity to pursue the same agenda they had in mind all along. With an executive order, Bush suspended the Davis-Bacon Act, which mandates that government contractors pay the “prevailing wage” in the area of operation to their workers, thereby enabling contractors to slash the wages of workers helping to rebuild the Gulf Coast. In order to pay for the reconstruction, Republicans in Congress have proposed cutting programs like Medicaid that directly serve the poor. Some have even suggested cutting taxes for the wealthy, because—well, because that seems to be the Republican solution to pretty much any problem.[emphasis added]
Even as Katrina recedes from the front pages, the opportunity for progressives to pose to the public the kinds of fundamental questions that define the ideological divide in America has not been lost. What sorts of security do we expect from our government? Who is it that government supposed to serve? What are our moral obligations to the vulnerable amongst us? What does our vision of the good society look like? If progressives can generate discussion on these questions, they will be able to put conservatives back even farther on their heels.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/200...n_the_poor.php
We can only hope...
So does this prove that Bush is the devil?
And relying on subsidized wards that do not help people move out of their situation is not cosidered being dependent. The fact that these people were poor is not only because they are losers in lifes lottery. Alot chose to be. And if growing social programs and having the largest govt since LBJ is considered to be a war on poverty. Not to mention that bush has not vetoed any single govt handout program. Then Random has lost all credibility.
so, they weren't too poor? they were just too ing stupid to get the out of there? thanks for the post dan....
At the least the Saints made it out
I was reading Parade Magazine and a reader sent in a question that asked about Emeril Lagasse and about how he was doing since the flood. The reader said that she had been worried about him and how he would recover from this tragedy.
I am glad she wrote in and asked that question because my main concern during the hurricane was whether Emeril would be able to recover enough to continue making his millions of dollars and living in his house made of gold.
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Silver Surfer Vape Review
Last edited by Mr. Peabody; 08-23-2011 at 06:41 PM.
That's kind of what I was thinking. WTF? I think I'd rather be classified as poor rather than flat-out stupid....perhaps those big-bad conservatives were giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Some couldn't get out. If a hurricane was coming towards SA, how many elderly or disabled people would be trapped here? How many working people that live paycheck to paycheck could just get up and leave? Take into account the fact that you need gas, money for a hotel if you don't have relatives to stay with, plus food and other neccessities for you and your family.
Even three days notice would not be long enough for a significant portion of our population to evacuate. You need to have somewhere to go and a way to get there. ing dip .
I don't agree with either of you. Yes there are always going to be people who can't leave. But if you have a job, then you can certainly get 50 miles further inland with 3 days notice. 50 miles would have made a of a difference for the people of NO.
So it wasn't poverty that kept them in New Orleans, it was their race. Got it.
Wow....if it were me & my kids I'd rather sleep in my car that I pushed 100 miles and eat cardboard then die. But that's just me.
And I believe it is understood that there were sick and elderly that needed assistance that they didn't get. A significant portion of them were neither.
Was the Klan blockading all routes out of town? If the people weren't poor and they weren't infirm, what was the problem?
Of course, that's assuming that you had a car. That's also assuming that the city had an adequately prepared evacuation plan that allowed you to get out of town in a timely manner.
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Deealovex
Last edited by Mr. Peabody; 08-23-2011 at 06:42 PM.
So they were too poor to own a car but they weren't poor?
Plus, lest we forget it was not the hurricane that caused all of the destruction, it was the levees breaching. People rode out the hurricane only to be hit with a deluge of water. So now you're asking people to anticipate the breach of the levees.
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Side Effects Of Wellbutrin
Last edited by Mr. Peabody; 08-23-2011 at 06:42 PM.
I didn't realize that if you are not on welfare it necessarily means that you aren't poor. This will come as news to a large part of my family that struggles even though they are not on welfare.
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The Peak Towers
Last edited by Mr. Peabody; 08-23-2011 at 06:42 PM.
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