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September 21, 2005

Will Hurricane Rita Be Racist?

With hurricanes on the tip of everyones' tongues, and the close eye on Hurricane Rita, the big question I think many are asking (be it tongue-in-cheek) is will Hurricane Rita be racist, too?

Hurricane Katrina was a Category 4 hurricane that just so happened to fall open and wreak havoc on a city that is nearly 70% black. While most of the hurricane trackings show Rita more likely to hit Texas than Louisiana, and with our heightened sensitivity towards hurricane relief and response, I suspect that there will be an outcry from the same groups of people who decried racism with Hurricane Katrina.

If the hurricane hits predominantly white areas, like Galveston County and Brazoria County, is this a Democrat storm? Was Katrina a Republican storm? Both will have occured under a Republican White House, and if left wing lunatics want to suggest that it is the Bush Administration's environmental policies that caused a hurricane to hit the predominantly black city of New Orleans, the same policies would have to also have had the power to create Hurricane Rita, which is due to hit predominately white counties in Texas. The only discrimination hurricanes exhibit is an inclination to attack the southern states, with an occassionaly stray going north. This is mother nature, not politics, not discrimination.

Not knowing much about the population of Texas cities, I don't know if there are any cities like New Orleans that have particularly large black populations. So, let's say one of the largely white cities get's hit hard, and all local, state and federal agencies perform outstandingly with an unprecedented evacuation and relief effort. Should this be the case, this will further enrage the race-baiters that New Orleans was specifically ignored--but, it won't be true.

The truth is that in the dys and months of Hurricane Katrina and the vast criticism (both legitimate and illegitimate) have made us ultra-sensitive to hurricanes. Now, with lessons already learned from Katrina, Hurricane Rita's timing is actually siginificant, in that it will put to the test the agencies at all levels, and following Rita, we will look back and evaluate. No one could doubt that our sensitivity to hurricanes today is infinitely greater than it was before Katrina--just the same as after 9/11 with terrorism.

Hurricane Katrina was a learning experience--Hurricane Rita will test our new found knowledge. Racism charges will likely be heard. If a black neighborhood or city is hit hard and authorities are even a half a second late in evacuating, it's racism. If a white neighborhood or city is attended to in apparent short order, there will be charges that the government secretly wanted to help the white areas, and ignore the black ones. If President Bush visits the area sooner than he did to Louisiana, it's racism.

This is the way it will go. The people that complain today about Katrina will complain harder no matter the circumstances with Rita. The response to Rita will be better than the response to Katrina, that alone will spark a slew of racism charges.

So will Hurricane Rita be racist? No, but the accusations following will be.

Posted by Aaron at September 21, 2005 01:17 PM

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Comments

aaron, don't you know bush is aiming hurricane rita towards houston to finish off the rest of the new orleans population that got out? you know to get those refugees...err...evacuees.

Posted by Falgore [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 21, 2005 03:57 PM

Good point Falgore i hadn't think of it.

Well, seriously talking, the reasons Texas gulf coast's towns & cities won't be damaged the way N.O. was, are simple. Governor Rick Perry is republican and a guy that spends most of the time doing his Job. Lousiana has Blanco, who thought that paying visits to Fidel Castro were positive steps for the progress of her state. Another reason is that prevention culture against hurricanes and natural disasters in general has always been better in Texas. So the point is not "how racist hurricanes are" but how efficient are authorities of places that are striken by them.

Posted by Alberto Laija [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 21, 2005 04:20 PM

Main Entry: ref·u·gee Pronunciation: "re-fyu-'jE, 're-fyu-" Function: noun Etymology: French réfugié, past participle of (se) réfugier to take refuge, from Latin refugium : one that flees; especially : a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecution - ref·u·gee·ism /-"i-z&m/ noun

So...what you're saying is the people of New Orleans (who just happen to be mostly black) fled from the city to avoid the danger of hurrican Katrina?

Falgore, you are a racist.

Alberto, you're failure to point the obvious racism of Falgore's post means that you are a closet-racist.

Now....Which one of you blew up the levy?

Posted by MJohnson [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 21, 2005 04:36 PM

Oh, that was me. I was nearly late because I had a shoot-homeless-pregnant-minority-teenagers appointment right before.

Posted by Richard Frankel [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 21, 2005 09:32 PM

W’s Goose is Finally Cooked! –APP newswire.

There is hope after all.

After the euphoric success of Katrina and the levee bombings, Mr. Bush’s operatives devised an even greater threat – W’s ultra-racist Gulf Hurricane II.

This did not escape ex-presidential candidate John Kerry’s attention, and, according to anonymous sources, Mr. Kerry was promptly spotted in his old swift boat plucking up whatever remaining refugees – er, evacuees and dead tree limbs he could find on condition that they appear in his ‘08 campaign video and donate a buck.

Not to be outdone, former presidential winner, Al Gore, who lost the presidency in 2000, declared today that the country could have avoided these tragic Acts of God, if only the Bush Administration had followed, to the letter, the grand scheme of his invention called “global warming”, which he asserts was patented even before he had invented the “information superhighway” now commonly known as the “internet”.

In an interview with Sean Penn, the free lance actor, Mr. Gore further claimed that by using the strict parameters of his invention, scientists were able to precisely predict the Great Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, and, even more impressively, the WMD events over Japan ten years later in 1945 – although neither event had the approval of the EPA.

This, Mr. Gore exclaimed, was irrefutable proof that, having already been used decades ago, ex-Iraqi president Saddam Hussein couldn't have possibly hidden those WMDS.

W's goose is totally cooked. With all the science now evident, how could he even have begun to allow such events as hurricanes in the richest country in the world!

Therefore, America is expected to undergo an administrative change in 2008 and a drastic departure from existing policies, commencing with the summary termination of the so-called “War on Terror”.

Instead of troops, the new commander-in-chief is expected to send a boatload of psychiatrists to help terrorists understand their pain, and to provide, free-of-charge, the ACLU web links for the blueprints of the new Freedom tower.

Rather symbolic. After all, “freedom” fought for with American lives equates to human rights for all.

As for hurricanes, it is expected that a joint session of Congress will approve the social experiment to have the losing Democratic presidential nominee or his/her designee (Howard Dean, the DNC chairman expressed interest to assume his habitual role although the smart money in on Cindy Sheehan to be duped into the job) to bungee jump into the eye of the next CAT-5 to photograph hard evidence, once and for all, of the dirty fingerprints of GOP manipulation (most likely images of either Dumbo or inept cronies), and somehow determine how outbursts of inane, irrelevant and gauche hysteria can actually contribute to the resolution of real world tragedies.

(Pass me the chopped liver, please.)

ja

Posted by ja620516 [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 23, 2005 01:49 AM

"Falgore, you are a racist."

well duh, mj. i'm a republican. i'm also a homophobe too, so if bush could get that earthquake in san francisco agian, that would be great.

Posted by Falgore [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 23, 2005 06:35 AM