Race and Class Prejudice

Recommended read: "The Chasm Between Us" by Polly Toynbee, an op-ed column from the British paper, The Guardian. Reading a foreign perspective is informative, even if I don't always agree with the author on certain points. Overall it is good -- especially the end, where the author widens her perspective to assess that London (and other countries with vast chasms between classes) would have the same problems as New Orleans. Her overall assessment that this disaster has revealed the gap between haves and have-nots in the U.S. strips the sheets off the race prejudice underlying many social problems here and around the world. And of course, I like the critique of "shock and awe."

I only heard yesterday about the middle-class suburbs, whose police forces blocked the bridges from the Convention Center area of NOLA and kept the poorer people from walking out of the flooded city. No wonder the poor rioted. I would, too. Here is a report from Science Daily:

Two San Francisco paramedics posted an eyewitness account online saying thousands were prevented from walking out of New Orleans via the Crescent City Connection. Gretna, La., police chief Arthur Lawson told United Press International several access points to the bridge were closed.

"We shut down the bridge," said Lawson.

He said Gretna had been "a closed and secure location" since before the storm hit.

The bridge is a major artery leading out of New Orleans across the Mississippi River. Lawson said once Katrina passed on Aug. 29, police from Gretna City, Jefferson Parrish and the Louisiana State Crescent City Connection Police Department blocked foot traffic on the three access points to the bridge closest to the West Bank of the river.

He said his town would have been overwhelmed if people had been permitted to cross over.

"There was no food, water or shelter" in Gretna City, Lawson said.

"If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged."

Or maybe the looting, burning, and pillaging were an espression of frustration from people who had been oppressed their whole lives and now must have felt like they were being sacrificed so that they wouldn't soil the pretty neighborhoods.