A Flood of Bigotry
by Tim Wise
This article originally appeared in LipMagazine.
Anti-Racist activist Tim Wise wrote the following essay on
June 20, when the flood waters were cresting in the states of the upper
Mississippi. - The Editors
Disasters
bring out the best and worst in people.
On the one
hand, millions of folks respond to the suffering of their fellow human beings
with compassion, concern, and even significant financial assistance when
needed. Be it a hurricane, an earthquake, tornadoes or the recent massive
flooding in the Midwestern United States, the hearts, minds, and often wallets
of large numbers of the nation's people are with those in need.
And on the
other hand, there's Rush Limbaugh, who has decided to use the flooding in Iowa
not to demonstrate compassion, but as an opportunity to make derogatory
statements about poor black folks: specifically those caught by the flooding in
New Orleans after Katrina in 2005.
As Iowans and some in Illinois watched flood waters rise
ever higher, Limbaugh took to the air to contrast these supposedly good and
decent people who have joined forces to help each other, with the presumably
evil, lazy and violent folks of New Orleans, who we are told, did nothing but
foment criminality and wait for the government to save them during flooding
there in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
"Limbaugh tried to contrast
these supposedly good and decent people with the presumably evil, lazy and violent
folks of New Orleans."
Thus, we
have his statement of a few days ago, in which he noted that in the midst of
the devastation in the Midwest:
"I see
people working together. I see people trying to save their property...I don't
see a bunch of people running around waving guns at helicopters. I don't see a
bunch of people running shooting cops. I don't see a bunch of people raping
people on the street...I see the heartland of America. When I look at Iowa and
when I look at Illinois, I see the backbone of America."
Sadly it
isn't only Limbaugh who has been making these kinds of comparisons. Millions of
us have also been subjected to the e-blast missives making the rounds, which
seek to contrast the law-abiding, God-fearing, and (let us not forget) mostly
white farming folks of the Midwest to the black, urban, and congenitally
defective folks of the Big Easy. If you haven't received something like this
from a friend, relative or co-worker yet, just wait, because you probably will
soon.
But what all of these like-minded rants indicate -
whether spewed to 20 million pliant sheep via the airwaves, or posted on a
pathetic little blog read by no one - is the dishonesty of those offering them
up. Either that, or the fundamental ineptitude of the same when it comes to
doing basic research, fact-checking, or merely paying attention to the
fundamental differences between the flooding of New Orleans and that of rural
and small town Iowa communities.
"New Orleans residents were
about four times as likely as their Iowa counterparts not to have access to a
vehicle that could facilitate their escape."
Among the
differences that should be readily apparent to almost anyone, consider:
In New
Orleans, residents were kept from escaping, literally forced back into the city
by armed police from a neighboring community. Nothing like this has happened in
Iowa.
In New
Orleans, relief agencies like the Red Cross were prohibited from entering the
city, thanks to an order from the Department of Homeland Security, which feared
that the provision of relief would delay evacuation. In other words, the
suffering was heightened deliberately by government order, as noted on
the Red Cross website, as early as September 2, 2005. Nothing like this has
happened in Iowa.
In New
Orleans, those stuck in the flood zone (tens of thousands in all) were herded
into the Superdome and Convention Center, where there was no air conditioning
(at the hottest time of the year in that city), no food, and little or no
water. When those who were trapped (and who would wait for three full days
before any serious assistance arrived) tried to get to the food in the pantries
of the Convention Center (food that would have gone bad or been written off
anyway), they were met by guns, pointed at them by members of the National
Guard, who warned them to "step away from the food or we'll blow your
fucking heads off." Nothing like this has happened in Iowa.
In New
Orleans, there are very few escape routes out of the city, as anyone who has
spent much time there can attest. The only artery capable of handling a
significant number of vehicles is Interstate 10, heading west or east. In the
Midwestern flood zones, there are far more escape routes, far fewer people to
get evacuated, and the flooding was a slow and steady process, unlike the rapid
inundation in New Orleans, which happened quickly after the overtopping of
inadequately constructed levees.
In New
Orleans, according to data in the 2004 and 2006 American Community Surveys,
conducted by the Census Bureau, residents were about four times as likely as
their Iowa counterparts not to have access to a vehicle that could facilitate
their escape from the flood zone. Whereas more than 21 percent of New
Orleanians were without access to a car at the time of Katrina, only 6 percent
of folks in Black Hawk County (home to hard-hit Cedar Falls, Iowa) and 5
percent of those in Linn County (home to flooded Cedar Rapids--the biggest city
affected by the latest deluge) were carless. To put the importance of not
having a vehicle in stark terms, 38,000 households in New Orleans, comprising
approximately 100,000 people, were without a car, and thus, unable to flee on
their own.
But perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the Limbaugh
and like-minded screeds has been the speed with which they have descended into
the pit of racist myth in order to bash the people of New Orleans once again,
much as they were doing in August and September of 2005. To wit, the repeated
references to looting, rapes, murders, shooting at helicopters and other
assorted mayhem by New Orleans' black folks, nearly all of which claims have
been discredited as utterly false, almost from the time they were first
concocted.
"Reports
of widespread thuggery in New Orleans during the flooding have only remained
believable to millions because of the race and class biases."
So consider
Limbaugh's formulation, where he says, "I don't see a bunch of people
running around waving guns at helicopters, I don't see a bunch of people
running shooting cops. I don't see a bunch of people raping people on the
street."
Fair
enough. Those things aren't happening in Iowa. Yet, according to multiple
post-Katrina investigations, and stories written up by the Associated Press,
the Los Angeles Times, the New Orleans Times Picayune, the Guardian (London), the New York Times, Popular Mechanics, Reason
Magazine and the American Journalism Review, they weren't happening in New
Orleans either. Reports of shooting at helicopters, or rapes or murders were
almost entirely false. There were no murders in the evacuation centers, few if
any sexual assaults (and none on the street as Limbaugh claimed), no
helicopters fired on, and no police officers shot by residents. Yes, there was
looting, although by a distinct minority of persons trapped in the city, and
overwhelmingly for necessities like food, medicine, water, and clothing to
replace the rotting, soaked rags people were wearing after wading through
waist-deep water. And according to persons on the ground in the flood zone,
even the luxury items taken were typically used as barter chips, to get rides
out of the city for oneself and one's family when it became obvious that large
scale assistance wasn't going to arrive any time soon. In other words, reports
of widespread thuggery in New Orleans during the flooding have been greatly
exaggerated, if not entirely fabricated, and have only remained believable to
millions because of the race and class biases that allow people to believe the
worst about poor black folks even without a shred of actual evidence.
And while Limbaugh and others praise Midwesterners for
pulling together in a spirit of cooperation = as opposed to the animalistic
chaos we are to envision when thinking of New Orleanians during Katrina - the
fact is there were innumerable acts of kindness in the streets of New Orleans
as well. Those who personally brought supplies to the thousands trapped
downtown reported little if any fighting or random anger amongst the assembled;
rather, they saw persons trying to shade the elderly, and make sure that old
folks and the very young had first dibs on what little relief supplies were
dribbling in. But the media focused on none of that, choosing instead to
highlight reports - false as they turned out to be - of mass violence.
"The
average amount of welfare received in the Iowa counties was higher than that
for recipients in New Orleans."
Then of
course have been the suggestions, especially common in the e-blasts and blog
postings to the effect that Iowans, unlike New Orleanians, have helped
themselves, because while the latter had grown dependent on government to solve
their problems, Midwesterners in the "heart of America" still value
the importance of self-reliance. But the fact is, Iowans are no less likely to
receive government assistance than those in New Orleans were prior to Hurricane
Katrina, according to the Census Bureau's American Community Surveys, taken in
2006 (the most recent year available) and 2004 (the last data collected for New
Orleans before the flooding of that city).
In hard-hit Linn County Iowa, 2400 households receive
cash public assistance, out of 85,000 total households, meaning that 2.8
percent of all households in the County receive cash welfare. In New Orleans,
prior to Katrina, and contrary to popular belief, only 2.6 percent of
households received cash welfare (4600 households out of 180,000). So in truth,
a slightly higher percentage of Linn Countians were on the dole than New
Orleanians. In Black Hawk County (also hard hit by the recent deluge), 2.5
percent of all households receive cash assistance: again, suggesting no real
difference between the mostly white and rural folks there, and the mostly black
and urban folks in Orleans Parish at the time of Katrina.
And it
should be noted, the average amount of welfare received in the Iowa counties
was higher than that for recipients in New Orleans. So whereas the average
annual amount of cash assistance received in New Orleans prior to Katrina was
only $2800, in Linn County it's $3200 and in Black Hawk County, the average
amount received is over $4600. Bottom line: those supposedly harder-working,
more self-reliant white folks in the heartland are just as likely to receive
public assistance as black folks in New Orleans, and when they do, they
actually get more than the latter in raw dollar terms.
As with
cash, food stamp participation is roughly the same in the hard hit Iowa
counties as in New Orleans before Katrina. In 2004, about 11 percent of New Orleans
households received food stamps, as did 8 percent of Linn County households and
10 percent of Black Hawk County households in 2006.
In addition
to traditional government assistance, let it also be remembered that Iowans are
quite dependent on another form of public handout: agricultural subsidies.
Indeed, Iowa - that place of hard working, self-reliant folks who are now being
contrasted with the supposedly government-dependent laggards in New Orleans -
receives the second highest amount of agricultural crop subsidies of any state
in the country, according to data compiled by the Environmental
Working Group. From 1995-2006, Iowa farmers raked in $16 billion in
subsidies, with 7 in 10 farmers in the state receiving some form of subsidy
from the federal government. Even those small family farmers at the bottom of
the subsidy pile, who receive far less than the large corporate giants who take
a disproportionate amount of the loot, still received a little more than $2000
per household: not much less than the amount received in cash welfare by those
in New Orleans, prior to Katrina, who received such assistance.
To put the
amounts received from government in perspective, in Black Hawk County, farmers
get about $15 million in crop subsidies, while in Linn County the annual take
is about $17 million. In New Orleans, prior to Katrina, residents there were
receiving about $13 million per year in cash assistance under the program for
dependent children and their mothers. So putting aside the cash welfare
received by Iowans, which as noted above was actually more, per household, than
that received by New Orleanians, crop subsidies indicate that Iowans were and
are more government dependent than the residents of New Orleans, no matter what
the racist and classist perceptions of the general public may be.
So here we are: a nation potentially on the precipice of
electing a man of color as president, being told by media pundits and others
that this fact demonstrates above all else how Americans have "transcended
race," and put aside the old animosities and bigotries of the past. Yet,
at the first opportunity, we see right-wing gasbags striving to perpetuate the
stereotypes, the false urban legends, and the deceptive rhetoric of racism to
score points with their readers and listeners. And if the speed with which such
venal propaganda is making its way around the web is any indication, the smear
campaign seems to be working.
"Iowans were and are more
government dependent than the residents of New Orleans."
Just one
more piece of evidence that this nation has transcended nothing when it comes
to race and racism. Just one more clear indication that the success of Barack
Obama says little in terms of what millions of white folks still believe about
the majority of black folks with whom we share a nation. So long as entire
communities can be pathologized in the minds of the masses, thanks to the
efforts of unresearched know-nothings like Rush, the ability of individuals of
color to rise to positions of authority will say virtually nothing about the
larger illness of racism and its continued salience.
Only when
white folks stand up to the Limbaughs of the world--only when we see
challenging white racism as our burden, our responsibility, and as a
fundamental part of what we need to do in the realm of that vaunted
"self-help" we're always preaching to others - will things likely
change. We've been silent too long, and our silence implicates us, just as
Rush's bombast indicts him, in the spread of this sickness known as racism. It
is well past time to leave collaboration behind.
Tim Wise is the author of: White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a
Privileged Son (Soft Skull Press, 2005), and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in
Black and White (Routledge: 2005). He can be reached at: [email protected]
SOURCE NOTE:
All census data and data on public assistance
levels and vehicle access comes from the U.S. Census Bureau's American
Community Surveys for 2004 and 2006, available at, Census Bureau American
Community Survey Database. Once into the databases, information for
Linn County, Black Hawk County, or New Orleans (entered either as New Orleans
city or Orleans Parish) can be retrieved by entering the county/city and state
name in the search function box and then following the various links for
demographic, income and housing data that appear.