Not poor black and helpless, just displaced

I have never read Baldilocks more passionately (and justifiably) outraged, and indeed her post here has both outraged me and moved me to tears, as well:

From an email (Baldilocks) received:

Two of our small [state omitted] towns have accepted 175 refugees from the hurricane. They are to stay at a local {organization omitted]. Rumor, not substantiated by official comment but by someone who was there, is that three were arrested before they got off the busses. Apparently some of the others reported to nurses on the bus that they were criminals or troublemakers and the nurses called ahead for the Sheriff to meet them. Once those three were arrested the other refugees were visibly relieved. This is being kept quiet but I know someone who was there.

It was heart breaking to hear their stories on the local TV. One man needed only one more years work to retire, one was a chemical factory worker (hired instantly by a local factory), one worked for the city, I believe one was a merchant, you get the idea. This is the opposite of what the MSM is telling. These are not poor, black, poverty stricken, non working, welfare expecting people. These are black Americans who consider themselves working middle class and who by natural disaster have lost all they have spent their lives working for. They arrived at 1am Sunday morning and some went to work this week. One man cried on camera in shame of not being able to take care of his family and having to accept charity. He also cried when he showed three handwritten pages of phone numbers and job offers he had received in a couple of days.

Sez Baldilocks: Why don’t the MSM—even FoxNews—stick microphones under such people? Because gratitude is boring and pontification about being a slave engenders outrage–and ratings.

Yup. And if it demeans the black community, what does the press care?

What a tremendous disservice the press is doing to the black community by portraying them – again and again as helpless and hopeless and (once more) victimized by the ugly white people and their (somehow, suddenly) racist president. By sticking to the “these are poor black victimized people – children, really, helpless, without resources, without the means or drive to be able to work” narrative – a racist narrative, btw – the press is minimizing the advancements of the black middle class over the last forty years, they are trampling on the justifiable pride that the black community should be feeling in those advancements, and they are insulting the tens of thousands of black evacuees who are feeling precisely the same thing any “white” person would feel upon losing everything in a catastrophic storm: anxiety for the family, reluctance to receive charity, anticipation of having to look for work…these are HUMAN predicaments, not black or white ones.

The press wants to talk racism, so they’re not talking about the black and white folks who were unaffected by the hurricane and are reaching out to the black and white folks who were. THAT is the story. If the press cared about building up – rather than tearing down – America, THAT is the story they would be telling.

Instead, it’s – “poor black folk being misused by whitey Bush and all of his Toms in the adminstration, the cabinet and on the judiciary benches…” And the message is: “those mean folks won’t take care of you like they should! You’d better stick with the Democrats, because they’ve had your interests at heart for the last 40 years! That’s the only reason you had it as good as you did in New Orleans, btw, the Democrats! Pay no attention to the fact that your DEMOCRATIC African American Mayor did not offer you a means of evacuating, and did not allow the Red Cross and the Salvation Army to come into the Superdome and give you aid and comfort. Pay no attention to the fact that your DEMOCRATIC Governor did not call in the National Guard when she should have! You just keep feeling voting Democrat and we’ll take care of you and everything will be alllllllright.”

Funny, I don’t seen any blacks on the judiciary committee currently snarking at John Roberts. I don’t read about them in the boardrooms of the major networks or catch stories about them eating in the corporate dining rooms of the major publishing houses.

But I DO read about them in the Bush Administration, in his cabinet and in the judicial seats he has named.