Sigh...

[pecunium]

What's wrong with these pictures?





Nothing, right?

Well, if you go and look at them here and here you will see that the couple in the first picture are just grabbing needed food, where the kid in the second has looted a grocery.

The only differences I can see between them are the color of their skin, and the bag of food the kid has (and the guy has a knapsack, so it's possible they have more than a "bottle of milk, a loaf of bread and come home right away." Absent knowledge of what's in the bag, and of how many people the kid might be taking it too; or of when he might be rescued, I'm willing to cut him the same slack the ones in the top picture get.

The food in those groceries is doomed. The perishables will perish and the semi-durable (canned goods) will probably be unsalvageable by the time they get the waters out of the city for not only are the pumps not capable of more than an inch an hour (as I recall reading) but they put the water into Lake Ponchartrain, which would be, until they repair the levee breaches, a Sysiphean task, since it will just run right back into town, charging anyone with looting; for food, is pointless, but the distinctions made here... sigh.

Comments

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Since one of the complaints is lack of comms, almost certainly.

TK

[firinel.livejournal.com]

trochee explained in comments to my post: it doesn't have to be the same writer to be an example of systematic oppression. I would challenge anybody to find a counter-example where the apparent races are reversed, using mainstream (i.e. AP, WSJ, NYT, Reuters) photos. No cheating by using the Marxist Mail or Indymedia or other extreme (by American standards) left wing micromedia.

and later

It can be institutionalized racism, without anybody ever having the thought "I dislike/don't trust/hate black people." That only the snarky bloggers noticed it, and it goes unnoticed and/or excused by white folks, is what makes it racism.

It's too easy to say "he meant well" in the culture of oppression. It's like inviting a female new friend at work to come out to a casual party and saying "bring your husband", just assuming that (1) she's hetero and (2) she's married. It's not that the person saying this is hateful towards women or homosexuality or single/poly-dom but the default arrangement of the culture and community makes being other than white/male/straight/married/affluent seem difficult and contrarian.

[zaimoni.livejournal.com]

Yes, the Ritz-Carlton still has guests (pending evacuation, fuel for the backup generator runs out tonight).

Hate to say this, but the comandeering operation is more reasonable
than calling a jug of milk "finding": the terminology is honest.

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

I wonder about Yahoo and news -- where is the cutline from? The place they got the photo from (and a story) or did they do it themselves? I dont read Yahoo for news so I dont know how much of theirs is original -- or how much actual news experience their people have, or if they are just web sorts who put stuff online that they are passed on...

[rparvaaz.livejournal.com]

The bias is very clear from the caption, isn't it, and not just because of the words 'looting' vs. 'finding'. In the first picture, two *residents* *wade* through chest deep water after finding food from a *local* store; in the second picture, the *young man* *walks* through chest deep water after looting a *grocery* store...

[cpolk.livejournal.com]

you'd call HER black? why? she looks pretty damned white to me. is it because her hair looks like it MIGHT be in a series of cornrows? I wasn't aware that black people had some kind of right to braids where white people do not. what makes her black? what do you see that I don't? because she looks white to me.

[fancythat2.livejournal.com]

New can O' worms.

(color unspecified)marketeering and hoarding to follow.

[heimshal.livejournal.com]

On a slightly side topic, what's the difference between looting and salvaging/finding if it's merely a distinction in category of item (as seems to be the conclusion in comments thus far)?

I just heard an estimate today that it's going to take 9 weeks for them to pump out the city after (if!) they get the levees fixed. 4 weeks in, a food hoarder has food, what do you have? I wouldn't really care if I'd appropriated jeans/tvs/jelly beans/shiny objects/Nikes as long as they're scarce goods that I can use to barter for my necessities. I believe it would be much more stable philosophical ground to pin the distinction on need and quantity, although both of those are pretty 'best-guess' numbers considering the current state of things.

[spimby.livejournal.com]

I was talking facial features, hoss.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

My comment still stands. I don't see anything particularly African about her features at all. She does, however, look somewhat like my aunt Kalliope (maybe it's just the thick shoulders) and cousin Jennifer.

[spimby.livejournal.com]

I want to be like Mike, and I still say she's a Moor!

[zaimoni.livejournal.com]

Apparently airlifting 3,000 lb sandbags didn't do the job.

[moropus.livejournal.com]

But the darker you are, the worse your actions are. The fact that we're arguing over her proves she can pass and therefore it's OK for her to take groceries. Yahoo is evil.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

It's worth considering, when it comes to clothes/shoes, that wearing soaking wet clothes for very long, especially when the water soaking them is filthy, isn't healthy--it can end up causing significant skin damage it you have to move about a lot. Most of the time, this wouldn't matter. But back to that dirty water/lack of sanitation thing--infection is the next step.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Yeah, she looks like the Italian side of my family.

Then again, she also looks like a lot of the women I see when I visit my father in Tenn., all of whom I'd call white, but it's possible they have the 1/16th of "negro" blood, which Louisiana used to say merited being "colored".

TK

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

No, I think we are arguing over it because spimby tried to make a case that there isn't any real racism in those captions because he thinks she might be black.

It's a red herring, since, absent some special pleading (that some quirks of her facial structure, ignore the actual color of her skin, when compared to the other person in her picture; and the tone of the kid in the other) she looks white.

It's ok for her to take groceries, because she needs them (what's she gonna do, leave money under the door?). It's just as ok for the kid to take groceries, because he needs them.

It's not ok to make a distinction on color.

TK

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Me, I'd be looking at hitting a sporting goods store and finding bathing suits, and (because I have no body fat to speak of) a wet suit. I'm worried about hypothermia.

But yes, the conditions in New Orleans are likely to get hellish.

TK

[franciskerst.livejournal.com]

I am surprised anybody could call "looting" the salvage of food or damaged goods that could not be retrieved by their owners anyway. Better that than wasting them.

However the girl in the first picture looks Asian. So if there is racism involved, is it aimed at black people only?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I'd make the distinction at the point where it stops being a needful thing for survival.

If you want to argue the breakdown is going to be so complete as to destroy all law and order, and that trading things like the string of pearls will be needed to get food.... deal with it as it comes.

But I doubt the people snagging jewelry are thinking they will need it to get food in a month, but rather they will get to keep it, or sell it, when this blows overs.

If the people in New Orleans are still there in three weeks, with the water around them, the issues will be a whole lot more severe than some looting. They will be dying, in droves.

Hypothermia, dysentery, starvation, and all of the other horrors which arise from a Hobbesian state will manifest.

TK

[jamesmcornett.livejournal.com]

Furthermore, who's to say the COUPLE ain't the kids and the black dude ain't an adult? I've seen ten year olds that look like they're old enough to get in a damn bar before.

Sounds like you got more than one level of messed-the-fuck-up discrimination here.

More Color Coded News

[killslowly.livejournal.com]

http://www.livejournal.com/community/blackfolk/2420240.html

image sources

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

i saw these images first on flickr, with the text attached in a screenshot (http://flickr.com/photos/firewall/38725768/in/photostream/). they didn't come from the same agency; one came from AP, the other from AFP.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

The second link no longer points to the photo in question.

I haven't looked into it myself, but a friend of mine who is fairly knowledgable about the media pointed out some problems with the comparisons above. First, the photos and captions came from two totally different news sources. Apparently AP has been consistent about calling everybody, regardless of race, a looter, whereas AFP has called people finders or looters pretty much at random, without a strict adherence to skin colour for either group. As mentioned, I cannot back up this observation, but it might be worth checking out.

Re: image sources

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

No, but AFP ran a picture with a black woman, and called her a looter.

So it still applies.

TK

Re: image sources

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

FWIW, i wasn't disagreeing with you, just providing information.