AP: Katrina Would Have Been "Just Another Storm" Had She Killed More White People

Sounds about right:

''You'd have to go back to slavery, or the burning of black towns, to find a comparable event that has affected black people this way,'' said Darnell Hunt, a sociologist and head of the African American studies department at UCLA.

If the rescue effort had not been so mishandled, and if those who suffered so needlessly had not been so black and so poor, perhaps Hurricane Katrina would have been just another destructive storm.

Empahsis mine (and SWLiP's).

That's sorta why I avoid writing about race. It's a minefield. I kinda-sorta know what this guy was trying to say, but what he did end up writing was, basically, that if only Katrina had obliged all of our equal-opportunity wishes and killed more white people, it would have been no big deal.

White people don't count. Or, rather, it's just that black people count more. A lot more.

Imagine were someone to say "If so many of the victims of 9/11 who died so needlessly had not been so white and so upwardly-mobile, it perhaps might have been just another destructive terrorist attack."

He'll get away with that, of course. You can root for the deaths of people, as long as they're not of a protected race.

Is there no way to note that blacks have been disproportionately affected by this storm without suggesting that if it were mostly whites who'd died, it wouldn't be quite such a tragedy at all?

posted by Ace at 01:42 PM

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