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

[ladymeow.livejournal.com]

Right... I love how the white couple just happened to "find it" and the black kid "looted it."

That's just wonderful.

[ladymeow.livejournal.com]

Is there any way we can complain about this, and possibly have the caption changed?

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's fucked up.

[betnoir.livejournal.com]

The CNN site, however states that the black guy was towing groceries.

No implication of looting.

I am amused to note that the pic sinboy had on his journal of a guy hauling about a dozen pairs of jeans was a white guy.


Food/water/medicine, I cut slack.

A dozen pairs of jeans?

Not so much.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Forgive for being intolerant, but I don't care that CNN got it right, The folks at Yahoo got it wrong.

If they want to paint people scavenging food as looters, fine (we disagree, but fine) but to say the black ones are looters, and the white ones are merely doing what they have to to stay alive is wrong.

It implies the black ones are supposed to sit on their asses and wait for help, or just roll over and die.

Which is bullshit.

TK

[spimby.livejournal.com]

Um, I'm pretty sure that's a black woman in the top picture.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Possible, but not to my eye, if it is, she is high yellow and could pass.

The average person is going to see a white woman.

TK

[gwai-lol.livejournal.com]

wow. its so depressing to see how bad things still are in 2005.

[selinawoman.livejournal.com]

Amen!

[phoenixw.livejournal.com]

"We don't just report the news! We shape it!"

There are times when journalists really, really annoy me.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I've been a journalist. It's hard work, and done under pressure, but (as I said to betnoir what I want is consitency. This isn't a news issue, it's a class/race issue.

If they said everyone who snagged something, no matter what it was, was looting, then fine. We disagree, but fine.

To make a distinction, absent some evidence, between two people taking the same sorts of things, well that's a horse of a different color.

TK

[lietya.livejournal.com]

Sigh, indeed. Good catch. I, too, like how they "found" it - clearly, it was just lying there on the [grocery-store-surrounded] ground.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Or floating away out the broken grocery-store windows, more likely.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

If it makes you feel any better, that things in N.O. are so bad right now, and so many people are finding out just how crappy the evacuation plan for people without cars was (as in, there was none), the police are doing nothing to stop "looting" from drug stories and groceries. (That's what I just heard a few minutes ago.)

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I'm not worried about the situation on the ground (vis a vis looting), but rather dismayed at the responses of the outside world, and the sad amount of pervasive, and subtle, racism we still soak in.

TK

[goalcam.livejournal.com]

It's not necessarily racist. The editor who tagged the first picture could be sympathetic towards the looters in the first picture while the editor who tagged the second may not feel the same.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

If that pissed you off, this should take the cake Law enforcement efforts to contain the emergency left by Katrina slipped into chaos in parts of New Orleans Tuesday with some police officers and firefighters joining looters in picking stores clean.

...

Some officers joined in taking whatever they could, including one New Orleans cop who loaded a shopping cart with a compact computer and a 27-inchn flat-screen television. Officers claimed there was nothing they could do to contain the anarchy, saying their radio communications have broken down and they had no direction from commanders. (http://blighty.multiply.com/journal/item/537)

[firinel.livejournal.com]

That's curious wording in your second link; it's almost as if not being able to contain the looting is mentioned as an excuse to their own looting of high ticket, non-essential, items. I suppose it could be an excuse, but I hardly consider it a valid one.

[st-crispins.livejournal.com]

charging anyone with looting; for food, is pointless

I just said the very same thing to my husband. These people are trapped and the products will be unsalavageable anyway.

I watched the em arrest a woman with a shopping cart... filled with diapers.

That's just plain stupid.

[underpope.livejournal.com]

Not to be pedantic, but it looks like the two photographs were taken by two different photographers and attached to two different stories. The first was attached to a story about the effects of Katrina (more a bullet-point list of effects), while the second was attached to a story about looting. If the two photographs had been taken by the same photographer and were both attached to the same story, there might be more of a problem, but I think that this case is simply unfortunate rather than racist.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

It's been addressed above, in the course of lots of threading.

TK

[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...

[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.

[zaimoni.livejournal.com]

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

[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?

[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

[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.

What's wrong with this picture?

[(Anonymous)]

Great catch. Too bad it is so freaking sad. The media is so twisted and corrupt. I guess the white folks were blessed by God who guided them to wander into that grocery and find that loaf of bread. The black guy was operating under the hand of Satan, storming the poor unattended grocery and unlawfully taking a loaf of bread designated for a white person.

Looting is transition to freedom

[fist-of-freedom.livejournal.com]

"If the coalition simply imposed control on the population, that wouldn't achieve the desired effect. We wouldn't be everywhere and we might also alienate a population that doesn't need to have another regime with a grip around its neck,"

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030411-010551-6382r

Well, there is an interesting detail here ...

[(Anonymous)]

...in general according to the law actions done in a state of necessity are not criminal. So if these people have been getting food, in a state of necessity, and most likely so, that's perfectly fine.

But then in a well organized place some ''authority'' would have arranged for confiscation and explicit distribution of such perishables, again under a state of necessity. But it is perhaps too much to ask that of a place like New Orleans...

finding vs looting

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

i was hoping somebody would track down the photographers and find out what was behind their word choices.

and somebody has:
http://www.snopes.com/photos/katrina/looters.asp

Re: finding vs looting

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Well, maybe.

The problem is first, no matter what the photographer thinks of the situation, it isn't looting until someone gets convicted, which makes it libel per se.


libel per se
n. broadcast or written publication of a false statement about another which accuses him/her of a crime, immoral acts, inability to perform his/her profession, having a loathsome disease (like syphilis) or dishonesty in business. Such claims are considered so obviously harmful that malice need not be proved to obtain a judgment for "general damages," and not just specific losses.

Which isn't really the point, but something he (or his editor) ought to have taken into account.

The second is that pictures say more than words. Even as illustration of a piece of text, the picture dominates. The editor ought to think about that (I did, when I was selecting photos). Choosing a black kid, and calling him a looter is a bad idea.

There will be other photos, and unless they all say everyone who has anything in their hands is looting, then the appearance of editorial decision to say blacks are looting, and whites aren't, will occur.

And it did.

TK

These Pics

[(Anonymous)]

What I really love is how Yahoo has taken down one of the pictures (of the white "residents") at "the request of AFP" resulting from the controversy. Why is it that they still insist on posting the picture of the young man and list him as a "looter?" It seems that they are attempting to subvert the controversy by removing the argument that he is a looter and the white couple are merely foraging, which to me demonstrates a willingness to continually apply a negative conotation to blacks without applying the behavior evenly accross the board. If they were to do anything about the controversy why insist on perpetuating the belief that looting is simply a black thing because now, the pictures of white's engaging in the same activity will not exist.