Of race & nature's wrath

In the aftermath of the horror of Hurricane Katrina, voices of anger and outrage are heard throughout the land, and just as quickly comes the chastisement of the media censors, who rush to the fore to criticize and condemn those who dare to speak truth to the Naked Emperor.

Mumia Abu-Jamal

Indeed, the central government has approved this message, saying with almost one voice, "Now is not the time for the Blame Game."

This government and media incest reminds me of other occasions when it was considered "bad form" to criticize the political (mis)leaders.

When a Black mayor of Philadelphia gave the go-ahead to police to bomb the MOVE house in 1985, he accepted "full responsibility" but none of the blame. Eleven men, women and children were shot, torn apart and burned to death, but no one was to blame (except Ramona Africa, who was sent to prison for seven years, for surviving).

When 9/11 struck and thousands of people died, name one political leader who was fired.

Indeed, when an FBI agent emerged to report that she had, indeed, provided tips to her superiors about people who were possibly involved in domestic terrorism, she was targeted.

Now, when political leaders sat back for almost a week, while people drowned, died from starvation, fell dead from chronic illnesses, or were tossed into the dark warrens of the New Orleans Superdome to live or die, it isn't time for blame!

Since when have you seen any member of the national leadership *not* blame people, for not living up to their 'standards' of so-called morality? The state and federal prisons are swelling with millions blamed and punished under scores of new laws that they've passed. They started a war based on blaming a nation's president for storing "weapons of mass destruction!" And what is war, after all, but blame writ large? Blaming another country—an entire country—for certain wrongdoings?

Yet they bellow, "Now is not the time for the Blame Game."

Rapper Kanye West, in a crystal-clear moment of emotion evoked by the harrowing pictures flashed of Black and poor misery in New Orleans, said, "George Bush doesn't care about Black people." Networks cut his live feed, and promised to tape upcoming appearances to insure that they could edit out any other unapproved utterances that might embarrass the Emperor.

And yet ... who among us can imagine a flood in say, Boston, where thousands were imperiled, and the government waiting four days to give succor to anguished white faces?

The faces of New Orleans, their suffering, their squalor, their loss, could just as easily have been seen in Haiti, in Rwanda, in Cambodia, and yet we are to act as if they were cared for by the national and state governments.

They didn't give a damn.

The hurried photo ops of Bush holding Black babies showed a man about as comfortable as a klansman at the Million Man March!

Ask the average Nigerian what he saw on TV. Ask the average Brit what she saw on the telly.

They saw the dark and anguished faces, sprinkled with other poor Hispanics, Vietnamese, and whites, staring out from eyes of emptiness.

They saw the dark side of "the ownership society": the society of people who owned nothing.

They saw America, without its makeup, and mask.

They saw a mirror of themselves, and wondered, if only for a minute, is this where we want to go?

This government didn't start, a week ago, not caring about the poor; for what else is the obsessive raid against Social Security, but an attack on the poor?