Katrina and the Race Card

I get really tired to hearing that <insert issue of the day> is caused by racism, or that people who believe that law and order should mean something are racists, or that only racists support welfare reform (or tax reform, or immigration reform, or virtually any type of reform known to man).

It is, in essence, minority leaders (or those pandering to minorities) saying ‘I can’t actually debate with facts so I’m just going to call anyone that disagrees with me a racist.”

Take looting in New Orleans as an example …. There have been reports of people, even some political figures that have compared people who expressed opposition to looting as, in the words of one blogger, ‘racist f---s’.

I’m sorry … but there is nothing that you NEED in a jewelry or electronics store. I can distinguish and allow the ‘looting’ of grocery and convenience stores for food and/or water in a situation such as this, heck a lot of the food in those places will spoil and have to be thrown out anyway ... at least this way SOMEONE gets some use out of it, but that plasma TV isn’t needed for your survival. Of course had residents been properly prepared then they wouldn’t need to loot even for the necessities of survival …. But that’s an argument for a different rant.

One person tried to justify the ‘looting’ of televisions by saying that they would use those televisions to ‘barter for the necessities’. I’m sorry … but what’s wrong with using cash, or items that *gasp* actually belong to you.

I’m sorry, I don’t care if you’re Black, White, Hispanic, Oriental, Martian, or Green with Purple Poka dots, stealing is stealing, and while I can forgive theft for the necessities of life given the extra ordinary conditions … taking advantage of those conditions to steal the property of others for personal gain is not forgivable. It’s not a ‘race’ issue … are most of the looters in New Orleans black? Well, given that most of the citizens of New Orleans are black (to something like a 7:1 ratio) then odds are pretty good that, yes, most of them are. Chances are pretty good that they are poor too … and that doesn’t matter either.

Odds are that … regardless of race … the people that start looting in these situations are the same people that take the ‘easy way’ out of life, preferring to live off government hand outs than to actually work for anything. Denied those hand outs they seek to take what they want directly (notice the use of "want" as opposed to "need"). At best they are lazy good for nothings, at worst they are social predators to whom stealing is already quite familiar.

Others want to blame the slow response of federal agencies on ‘racism’ … saying, as Georgia Democratic Congressman David Scott suggested, that ‘Washington would have moved more swiftly if the faces on rooftops had been white.’

Of course now we are finding out that the delay in federal support came because the Louisiana Governor declined the initial offer of aid, requesting time to assess the situation. The same also seems to be true with the Red Cross response … National Guard Troops and Red Cross were ready to go as soon as the hurricane was over … but were delayed by the state government.

Federal support can be offered, but unless it is accepted there’s nothing that they can do. Red Cross can technically go in on their own, but in a situation like that, if martial law is in effect they can find themselves on the wrong side of a bad situation. No … the slow response wasn’t racism … unless it’s the Governor of the state that you’re accusing of being racist.

Just because something bad happens to a member of a minority group … or a member of a minority group finds themselves in a situation that causes people to disapprove of their actions … doesn’t automatically make them a victim of racism. If a person that happens to be a minority gets fired from a job by a boss who is white because they weren’t DOING their job, that doesn’t make it racism, but there are those that will be jumping up and down shouting racist and pointing their fingers at the boss if it gets televised on the news.

We really need to take the ‘racism’ card out of the deck … with as often as it is used today the only thing that is happening is that true examples of racism are more likely to go unnoticed …. Much like the boy who cried wolf was ignored when the wolf actually showed up….