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| Trumps, every time. | |
In a world of unexpected twists and turns, of unprecedented disasters and
mass human suffering, it's comforting to know that some things are always
predictable. Like Jesse (The Victim) Jackson pulling the race card to gain a
few cheap political points. The reverend has
slammed the Bush administration for incompetence in the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina. After comparing the plight of thousands of (almost
exclusively black) victims to slave conditions, he
questioned why Bush has not named blacks to top positions in the federal
response to the disaster, particularly when the majority of victims remaining
stranded in New Orleans are black: "How can blacks be locked out of the
leadership, and trapped in the suffering?"
One wonders how thousands of stranded and desperate blacks feel about
merit being replaced by affirmative action as the deciding factor in determining
who leads the disaster response teams. Of course, in his haste to scream 'racism!', Jesse overlooked one small thing:
the facts.
U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Russell Honore, head of the military task force overseeing
operations in the three states, is black.
Oops. It is true that 98% of the stranded are are black. The only whites
appearing in the media images are those who voluntarily stayed (like nurses),
whose who were too sick to leave (like the very old), and the occasional
bemused tourist who forgot to listen to the local radio on their holiday ('that
Bush bloke makes a terrible DJ, and all those warnings are so boring ..'). But if the good Reverend wants to make race an issue out of this, he risks
the Great Melting Pot calling the kettle black. If 98% of the remaining people are black then who are the the gang members,
the looters, the rapists and the hoodlums? And who are they perpetrating crimes
against? Eye-witness accounts are now trickling out that whites and foreigners have
been targeted by the gangs and hoodlums. The obvious reaction to this - quietly smuggling out whites ahead of the
others - will doubtless be heralded as further evidence of racism by the likes
of Jesse Jackson. But that will not stop the unspoken observations that comparisons with Africa
may be a little more apt than the good reverend would care to admit. And as for claims about minority groups being victims, well,
maybe Jesse would be better off just pulling his head in over this one.
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