Documenting Instanity

White People are affected by Hurricane too

Wizbang has a great article on the lack of coverage (particularly TV coverage) to Katrina's destruction outside of New Orleans parish. He goes on to explain that he believes this unbalanced coverage caused people outside of that narrow zone to get much less help than their counterparts. With no further information to go on, his explanation seems entirely likely to me.

Towards the top he has this political/journalism question:

St. Bernard Parish is (was) 90% white but not a single federal person stepped foot into the parish for almost a week. They still have been largely ignored. And the whole parish was basically destroyed. I read that they were going to bulldoze a section of the Parish that was 4 miles long by 2 miles wide (think about that) and do it before the home owners could even try to retrieve any possessions. They are just going to bulldoze the whole area. If someone wanted to bulldoze that many homes owned by black people, it would be an international scandal and the UN would want to step in. But they are white people so you won't see Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton whining on CNN. They'll be no cries of racism. It will just happen.

It may or may not be right or wise to do what he suggests is going to happen. But his point that we won't see protests on TV only because these people are mostly white and not mostly black rings true to me.

Before I get the hate mail, I think the right answer in this case is that the facts be made public and government officials be forced to publicly explain why they would level someone's home without allowing them to try to salvage personal belongings. It is not bad that Jesse Jackson has made this sort of this thing happen for black communities. It is astoundingly bad that our journalists only show up in these cases when there is a cry of racism. They should be there ahead of Jesse Jackson in the black communities and the white ones. The fundamental right of "freedom of speech and journalism" is there so that we can force politicians to act in the daylight.

posted by mailgeek @ 3:36 PM