Is it racist?

Listening to NPR & This American Life, the episode that came out a week after the Hurricane. It dabbles in the positive, the familiar sounding fairness and superhuman strength in crisis that I actually grew up with, most of the time.

Then there is the more predominant perspective, also familiar, suspicion of black folks. The stories told during this episode fracture along color lines. It's been a topic that folks have brought up in discussion and I thought I'd weigh in here. My gut is that the media perpetuates specific racist responses in society. I also think that on the other side of it, the media encourages a wildly inappropriate sense of entitlement that almost incessantly focuses on material goodies. This usually isn't a problem, but becomes one in times of crisis.

It should be simple to focus on the present - to strip yourself of your ambitions and make sure those around you are safe -- but if you cannot, it's impossible to help. I think that the folks who got out did the best they could, and that their relatives and friends did the best they could and that somehow, folks got the message that it was ok to take care of just your own. I think that folks who are further out, and the media, did the normal song and dance around racism, once it was obvious that the majority of folks affected are black.

Growing up in DC, I found this alarming -- in my highschool an eye opening spontaneous poll involved asking the class what they thought the percentage of black folks was in America, I guessed around 70%, not the national average of 13% -- because I was looking at who was around me and counting. Now that I've been in Seattle for 16 years, I am living in the first neighborhood that is regularly policed, bright, open and safe. I initially found Seattle frighteningly white. Not because I don't get it that I'm white, it's because I remember the hostile looks white folks would give my friends and could sense the tension I felt spending time with folks who could run into predjudice many times a day.

That, plus learning through experience that my every attempt to liberally repair the damage caused by my people visited on black folks was inevitably not enough, somehow resulted in me not having a chip on my shoulder about racism. I get it. It sucks, is intractible and will take life times to reverse. And I think it was a big fat factor in the resistance we all saw to helping black folks in Katrina's levy breaking wake.

So, that's my soapbox moment. I think we can slam the media not just for it's support of racism (through repeated assumptions around black folks) but can also slam it for it's relentless hawking of entitlement. It's really not appropriate.

Gathering my thoughts

I've had a hella good post simmering for Hard to Get over the last few months. Since I'm still digging my way out of an elegant transition, masking only slightly the over-a-year-old burnout, I've not been posting at all. I'll keep that post on the backburner, tho. No need to rush things now.

Some thoughts from current news items:

Mississippi Burning: After 40+ years, Edgar Ray Killen has been convicted of the slayings of three civil rights workers outside of Philadelphia, MS. I wrote earlier in this blog about Rwanda through the eyes of Romeo Dallaire and I've also written about the Armenian Genocide, and I'm struck by the repeated ability to collude by many folks.

The re-opening of this case reminds me of the two references above because it takes economic pressures, collusion of folks in positions of authority and tacit agreement all around to single folks out for their differences -- yet we've mastered this ability. I've not even mentioned the situation in the Sudan, something that is happening right now. It's puzzling, the willingness we have to kill others.

I've been toying with a notion to highlight the ancestral relationships between men & women - men linked to protection of community, women linked to earthly abundance & nurturing. It's always seemed a contentious tragedy that the maligning & subjugation of women hasn't been connected to the issues of squalor & lack in the world. I know that men suffer at the hands of women & that there isn't a clear indication that bringing women, finally & forever, out of the snare of male rulership isn't a clarion call to resolving the issues the world faces, but it does seem that the world is in a bind & that the bind is simply contracting and expanding, rather than truly being resolved. Feel free to take potshots at this theory. I'm nothing -- if not one with a tendency to generalize.

Bolton GOP support is back: "President Bush has the power to install Mr. Bolton as United Nations envoy by appointing him while Congress is not in session, during its summer break, for example. Such a recess appointment would be effective until the end of the next session of Congress, about 18 months from now."

The Economy: Currently, healthcare cost increases are outpacing inflation. Also, more companies are firing people. Finally, chickens come home to roost for Rigas, latest in a line of messed up management. Generalist warning: at this point, how can industry not fight over the last dollar? Am I missing something here?

More stories, this time no links: Schiavo (still dead), Saddam (new story from, evidently, the guy guarding him), Bush polls (no longer worried about how low they go - and why not, it's his second term)

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So, funny story. J & I visited Laurie this week & she mentioned that she's writing a book (substitute appropriate job title here). No big surprise there, she's a genius with stuff to say. Would J be her book agent? This is the funny bit, I say "I'd make an awesome book agent", and "Choose me!". She's game, then a dull silence falls around the three of us. J's looking at me, Laurie's looking at us both & I say, "Oh yeah, I'm not taking on any new tasks before I get my work situation cleared up."

Laurie is one of my closest friends and indulgent, so she didn't mind my quick turnaround. But I know it's trying when I'm apparantly available to do good work, then I pull back. What I'm trying to avoid is spending my time in a way similar to how I used to spend my money: I would try to spend it four or five times. First on say, a nifty gadget - then on, maybe, food - and my favorite - after trying to spend money twice, I'd save it! Get where I'm going here? You can't spend money more than once! Ha! Took me forever to get that & now that tendency has creeped into how I spend time: I'll help here, there & everywhere - then I'll go have fun -- and then... I'll take care of myself & rest...

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No laptop yet -- so I'm luxuriating at J's desktop. He's on a conference call right now & has graciously let me interrupt his workday with occassional e-mail checkings & news readings... Infrequent computer access is doing wonders, I'm thinking.