George's feelings on the Hurricane

Remember when I wrote in a previous entry that America was avoiding the conversation on race, well, the Hurricane with the ethnic name may have kick started that process. Don't get me wrong, I didn't want the conversation to happen under these circumstances, but it usually takes something traumatic to kick start the process.

Personally, I do not believe the Federal government were late with the aid because the folks down there were black. At least I hope not, because if they did then may God have mercy on them because they murdered thousands of people, but I don't believe that happen. Here's how I see the whole situation.

Knowing that so many people in the city couldn't afford to evacuate themselves, state and local officials should have come up with a plan to get these people out. Hurricanes may come and go, but this was a category 5 and you should never play around when there is a situation that serious.

Ok, so there's where the City of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana, messed up. Well, what do you do after the levees break and these folks have nowhere to go. This is where the Federal government steps in. The Feds were fatally slow in their response. They probably would've been down there faster if the folks had been upper-middle class and above, but those folks wouldn't have been there because they had the means to get out of town. The folks that were left were the uneducated and poor. Basically those who were left behind a long time ago. Unfortunately for America, in the inner cities, these people tend to be black.

This is the conversation we need to be having. Not about why the government was so late with its aid, but why it's so many black people in poverty and what BLACK PEOPLE can do about it. If it's not any more apparent now, that the government isn't here to hold your hand and pick you up when you fall, then you 're lost. I see that Black folks need to learn how to pick themselves up.