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

[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

[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.