<http://www.michigancitizen.com/default.asp?sourceid=&smenu=76&twindow=Defau lt&mad=No&sdetail=2156&wpage=1&skeyword=&sidate=&ccat=&ccatm=&restate=&resta tus=&reoption=&retype=&repmin=&repmax=&rebed=&rebath=&subname=> http://www.michigancitizen.com/default.asp?sourceid=&smenu=76&twindow=Defaul t&mad=No&sdetail=2156&wpage=1&skeyword=&sidate=&ccat=&ccatm=&restate=&restat us=&reoption=&retype=&repmin=&repmax=&rebed=&rebath=&subname=
Cornel West speaks out on Katrina Philosopher, theologian and social justice advocate Dr. Cornel West was asked his opinions recently by the London Observer newspaper about Hurricane Katrina. See response below. It takes something as big as Hurricane Katrina and the misery we saw among the poor Black people of New Orleans to get America to focus on race and poverty. It happens about once every 30 or 40 years. What we saw unfold in the days after the hurricane was the most naked manifestation of conservative social policy towards the poor, where the message for decades has been: You are on your own. Well, they really were on their own for five days in that Superdome, and it was Darwinism in action - the survival of the fittest. People said: It looks like something out of the Third World. Well, New Orleans was Third World long before the hurricane. Its not just Katrina, its povertina. People were quick to call them refugees because they looked as if they were from another country. They are. Exiles in America. Their humanity had been rendered invisible so they were never given high priority when the well-to-do got out and the helicopters came for the few. Almost everyone stuck on rooftops, in the shelters, and dying by the side of the road was poor Black. In the end George Bush has to take responsibility. When [the rapper] Kanye West said the President does not care about Black people, he was right, although the effects of his policies are different from what goes on in his soul. You have to distinguish between a racist intent and the racist consequences of his policies. Bush is still a frat boy, making jokes and trying to please everyone while the Neanderthals behind him push him more to the right. Poverty has increased for the last four or five years. A million more Americans became poor last year, even as the super-wealthy became much richer. So where is the trickle-down, the equality of opportunity? Healthcare and education and the social safety net being ripped away - and that flawed structure was nowhere more evident than in a place such as New Orleans, 68 percent Black. The average adult income in some parishes of the city is under $8,000 (£4,350) a year. The average national income is $33,000, though for African-Americans it is about $24,000. It has one of the highest city murder rates in the US. From slave ships to the Superdome was not that big a journey. New Orleans has always been a city that lived on the edge. The white blues man himself, Tennessee Williams, had it down in A Streetcar Named Desire - with Elysian Fields and cemeteries and the quest for paradise. When you live so close to death, behind the levees, you live more intensely, sexually, gastronomically, psychologically. Louis Armstrong came out of that unbelievable cultural breakthrough unprecedented in the history of American civilisation. The rural blues, the urban jazz. It is the tragi-comic lyricism that gives you the courage to get through the darkest storm. Charlie Parker would have killed somebody if he had not blown his horn. The history of Black people in America is one of unbelievable resilience in the face of crushing white supremacist powers. This kind of dignity in your struggle cuts both ways, though, because it does not mobilize a collective uprising against the elites. That was the Black Panther movement. You probably need both. There would have been no Panthers without jazz. If I had been of Martin Luther Kings generation I would never have gone to Harvard or Princeton. They shot brother Martin dead like a dog in 1968 when the mobilization of the Black poor was just getting started. At least one of his surviving legacies was the quadrupling in the size of the Black middle class. But Oprah [Winfrey] the billionaire and the Black judges and chief executives and movie stars do not mean equality, or even equality of opportunity yet. Black faces in high places does not mean racism is over. Condoleezza Rice has sold her soul. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
