(originally published September 8th, 2005)<\/p>\n
The events over the last couple of weeks have gone out around the world. I know some people through email in other countries who have written me expressing their thoughts on the tragedy that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s occurred. What always follows, though, is an accounting from their local newspapers on how bad race relations are in the United States.<\/p>\n
There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no doubt that things aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t perfect in America; they never have been. I tend to believe that they can be better, but then I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m often the optimist in the bunch. I have found myself in the odd position, though, of being the voice counter to the many who are saying that the delay in federal help to the Gulf states was the result of racism.<\/p>\n
Does anyone really think that George Bush was sitting in the White House saying \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh good, nature has provided a way to wipe a bunch of minorities out of the way, because they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t support me in the last election?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d What possible benefit could anyone think he would derive from such thoughts when his current approval rating is so low because of what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s happening in Iraq, not to mention where it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s probably going now with the rising gas prices.<\/p>\n
Every politician in Washington, Louisiana and Mississippi is taking one on the chin right now; am I missing anyone? Yes, many of the displaced happen to be minority, but not all, and I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even say that I believe it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the majority, though I really don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know. This one cut across many boundaries; black, white, rich, poor, married, single, families. Nature doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care about race when it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time to show how powerful her forces can be. Emotions are still running high; let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not detract from what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reality and what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not.<\/p>\n
However, one final point before I go. Just the fact that it even came up shows us that racism is a powerful force to overcome, and that the thoughts are always there, bubbling under the surface. Racism didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t cause some of the delays that have occurred; racism did come to the forefront, though, and this time, the entire world is watching to see what we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to do about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(originally published September 8th, 2005) The events over the last couple of weeks have gone out around the world. I know some people through email in other countries who have written me expressing their thoughts on the tragedy that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s occurred. What always follows, though, is an accounting from their local newspapers on how bad race […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diversity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}