Counterbalance: Katrina Unleashes Flood of Ignorance, Hate, Opportunism
Commentary by Darryl Wood, ^©2005 Wood Communications, LLC 

What should have been a shining hour of universal cooperation and American-style togetherness degenerated-if only momentarily-into  racially charged Bush-bashing.

I’m amazed at the bigotry and narrow-mindedness expressed by one very foolish young man, a Mr. Kanye West. In case you didn’t see or hear his remarks on the hurricane relief program aired live on NBC on Friday night, September 2nd, they were of the most disgusting, self-serving, derogatory sort.

Numerous celebrities and host Matt Lauer of NBC’s Today show had been doing a marvelous job of making dignified pleas for financial support to aid the Gulf Coast residents devastated by hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately, when his time came, instead of sticking to the script written for him, Kanye West, a rap music performer and producer, launched into a stupefying anti-government, anti-George Bush, racialist tirade, proclaiming “I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family, it says they’re looting. See a white family, it says they’re looking for food.” Continuing to the obvious discomfort of actor Mike Myers, with whom West was paired, the rapper further intoned “America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible.”

By now, Mike Myers was looking for a way to salvage the moment and the show by attempting to interrupt, but not before West added “…a lot of the people who could help are at war right now, fighting another way…and they’ve given them permission to go down and shoot us.” Finally, West concluded his incendiary remarks: “…George Bush doesn't care about black people. Please call.” At which point the camera cut away to comedian Chris Tucker, who was visibly perturbed.

Kanye West had effectively hijacked what was intended to be a non-political, non-controversial hour of charity and good will, turning it into his personal platform for intolerance and self aggrandizement: “…I’ve even been shopping before giving a donation, so now I’m calling my business manager right now to see what, what is the biggest amount I can give.”

I think that was the point of the entire program, Kanye.

West could have used his national platform to diplomatically assert that the excessive media attention paid to so many poor black victims is in a certain respect imbalanced, and doesn’t tell the stories of the shared sufferings of Americans from all ethnic and economic backgrounds. He may have even argued how reactionary national media once again demonstrated a type of editorial myopia, as they all too eagerly painted the face of American poverty and trauma as overwhelmingly black, which is unfair and untrue. At least then he wouldn’t have so miserably tarnished the compassionate efforts of his colleagues. As it is, his hard-core racism charge rings hollow when you stop to think that this rap star, worth 50- to 100-million dollars by some estimates, grew up as a working middle class youth in Chicago and went to college. Now, by virtue of his hip-hop celebrity status, he’s an expert lecturing America about the oppression of poor blacks.

Fact Check
Here’s what really happened in terms of the lines of accountability.*

• President Bush declared Louisiana a disaster area two days before the hurricane struck the New Orleans area.
• President Bush urged New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco to order the mandatory evacuation that was issued on Sunday, August 28.
• First responders to a disaster are always state and local emergency agencies. FEMA is there to supplement the state and local activities.
• The hurricane threatened an area as large as 90,000 square miles covering three states. Immediate relief could not possibly have been delivered to all the places that required attention.
• An AP photo showed a large fleet of New Orleans buses soaking in six feet of water. The mayor apparently had the means to evacuate many of the folks who ended up stranded at the Superdome and the convention center.
• FEMA began its activities immediately, not expecting the magnitude of the flooding, the non-response at the city and state level, and the anarchy that resulted.
• The local and state governments had rehearsed for a different scenario. Disaster drills in New Orleans had taken place, but with a false assumption that the levees would hold.
• Both the law and protocol prohibit the president from ordering military troops into a state without a formal request to do so from the governor of the affected state.

Independent press accounts from Fox News Channel, corroborated by Red Cross President Marty Evans, confirm that the Red Cross had arrived with enough food, water, blankets, and hygiene equipment for thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims inside New Orleans' Superdome the night before levees broke and flooded the city. The relief was blocked by Louisiana Homeland Security bureaucrats who worked for Gov. Kathleen Blanco, whose goal was to get residents to evacuate; their rational reportedly being that by denying aid you force people to leave the Superdome rather than making it a magnet where they remain.

Same Old Stuff
Kanye’s antics really are just the symptom of a much larger disease affecting the Democratic body politic in America. He’s like a cheerleader for a long list of ‘Get Bush at any cost’ hate mongers. It’s a political hate affair many liberal democrats and leftists have for the President. It motivates much of what they do and say. Furthermore, West is typical of so many Americans, socio-political operatives, and organizations, which, in the name of “social activism”, rarely miss the chance to hijack or exploit a national cause - even a nationally televised disaster relief fundraiser - especially when it involves large numbers of minorities. The game plan is always the same: pit one side against another in a kind of class and/or race warfare, subdividing everybody along economic, political and racial lines; while at the same time attempting to usurp public platforms for their own agendas.

For example, piling on the race hustling rhetoric are the likes of the Jacksons (Jesse senior and junior), who assert blacks should be first in line for city rebuilding jobs, and that the government should in one fell swoop eliminate black poverty in New Orleans. Nation of Islam leader Louis Farahkan is certain on the word of ‘reliable sources’ that the levees were purposely blown up to kill poor blacks and destroy their neighborhoods. Elsewhere, black activists Al Sharpton, Randall Robinson, and the Congressional Black Caucus all claim in one way or another that racial discrimination was a factor in the government's (read the Bush Administration) sluggish relief effort. The Black Caucus subsequently called for a government program to help blacks find jobs, relocate, and otherwise resume life. CBS News’ “Sunday Morning” program of September 4th featured the ranting of commentator Nancy Giles, a black woman, who angrily knocked the President because as she perceived it, he moved too slow to help storm-worn evacuees only and especially because they were predominately black. Bringing in the liberal environmentalist point of view from left field Robert F. Kennedy Jr. threw in his two cents worth, blaming Hurricane Katrina on Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour for his role in “derailing the Kyoto Protocol.” Not to be outdone, Democrat National Committee head, Howard Dean, writing in a fundraising letter said “… Americans have seen another kind of disaster unfold. The irresponsible lack of attention by our federal government has led directly to the devastation of communities and the loss of American lives.” New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton got her licks in, too, calling for the creation of yet another wasteful congressional commission to investigate the federal government’s emergency response. She insisted that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) ran better under her husband’s presidency. Factor in the din of international blame including Middle East spiritual leaders from both the Jewish and Muslim religious communities, who claim Hurricane Katrina was divine punishment for U-S foreign policy decisions, and al-Qaida terrorists who see the storm as Allah’s assistance in their war on America, and you can see that Kanye West’s outlandish tongue lashing of George W. Bush at the wrong place at the wrong time is right in step with the usual race hustlers, poverty pimps, liberal left media, and the foreign contingent of the ‘blame America first’ crowd. All of whom believe their respective causes can be furthered by taking center stage in the middle of a national crisis.

Finding fault and the blame game are worn weapons in the liberal PR arsenal, which may backfire on those who continue to deploy them. West’s criticisms and those of his allies don’t stand up in the face of the facts-particularly when you consider that we’re witnessing the most successful disaster relief and recovery operation in history. To Kanye West and the others crying racism, I ask where these ‘leaders’ with all their concerns for New Orleans’ poor blacks were on the day before Katrina struck?

Charity is Job One
As civil libertarians, Monday morning armchair quarterbacks, and political grandstanders were hemin’ and hawin’ about what a racist government America has and how long it took to help the poor black people, private citizens from all walks of life realized the magnitude of the disaster and didn’t hesitate to lend helping hands. Record numbers of dollars, over twice as much as was raised after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, has already been collected through organizations like the Red Cross. Corporations and religious groups are sending hundreds of millions more in food, clothes, water and medical supplies. Americans are opening their homes all over the country to take in evacuees. True to his word, President Bush has obviously given this crisis priority status and has corrected most of the problems that hampered earlier relief efforts. The National Guard and Coast Guard have rolled into the area to restore order and the Army Corp of Engineers has repaired the breached levees on Lake Ponchartrain and turned its attention to pumping water out of the city. This is what Americans do. And if actions speak louder than words, and they do, we’re doing it with compassionate, heroic, color blind brilliance. As a result, I believe New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast are on pace to recover and rebuild with astonishing speed.

The U-S has never had a city of half a million people wiped out at once. While it may have brought out the worst instincts in a relative few eager to take advantage of so many, it also brought out the best in millions of others willing to help their fellow citizens and demonstrate why we are the greatest, most compassionate, most generous nation on earth.

It was a hurricane, not racism that ravaged the people of New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast. Perhaps the only thing more overwhelming than Katrina’s rampage may be the balkanization, finger pointing, political one-upmanship and the blame game that threaten to further tear at what’s left of our national unity. 

You think about that, Kanye.

*Based on an analysis compiled by NewsMax, 4152 West Blue Heron Blvd, Ste 1114 Riviera Beach, FL, 33404 USA