�

From: Soft Skull Announce

Reply-To: Soft Skull Announce

To: [email protected]

Subject: Tim Wise on Katrina

Date: Sat,� 3 Sep 2005 14:23:21 -0700 (PDT)

�

�

�

Tim Wise, who is a brilliant anti-racism activist, and lived in New Orleans

1986-1996, just sent us this...We will continue to forward his commentaries on

the unpreventable hurricane, and its preventable aftermath, over the coming

days...

�

�

------ Forwarded Message

From: Tim Wise <[email protected]

Date: Fri, 02 Sep 2005 17:03:23 -0500

To: <[email protected]

Subject: article on katrina

�

I have been paralyzed this last few days, unable to write anything.

�

That changed today.

�

This is the first of several things I'm going to be getting off my chest.

Hope you all find them useful, or confirming, or cathartic, or whatever. If

not, just delete them and move on I guess.

_____________

�

�

A God With Whom I am Not Familiar

By Tim Wise

�

This is an open letter to the man sitting behind me at La Paz today, in

Nashville, at lunchtime, with the Brooks Brothers shirt:

�

You don't know me. But I know you.

�

I watched you as you held hands with your tablemates at the restaurant where

we both ate this afternoon. I listened as you prayed, and thanked God for

the food you were about to eat, and for your own safety, several hundred

miles away from the unfolding catastrophe in New Orleans.

�

You blessed your chimichanga in the name of Jesus Christ, and then proceeded

to spend the better part of your meal--and mine, since I was too near your

table to avoid hearing every word--morally scolding the people of that

devastated city, heaping scorn on them for not heeding the warnings to leave

before disaster struck. Then you attacked them--all of them, without

distinction it seemed--for the behavior of a relative handful: those who

have looted items like guns, or big screen TVs.

�

I heard you ask, amid the din of your colleagues "Amens," why it was that

instead of pitching in to help their fellow Americans, the people of New

Orleans instead--again, all of them in your mind--chose to steal and shoot

at relief helicopters.

�

I watched you wipe salsa from the corners of your mouth, as you nodded

agreement to the statement of one of your friends, sitting to your right,

her hair neatly coiffed, her makeup flawless, her jewelry sparkling. When

you asked, rhetorically, why it was that people were so much more decent

amid the tragedy of 9-11, as compared to the aftermath of Katrina, she had

offered her response, but only after apologizing for what she admitted was

going to sound harsh.

�

"Well," Buffy explained. "It's probably because in New Orleans, it seems to

be mostly poor people, and you know, they just don't have the same regard."

�

She then added that police should shoot the looters, and should have done so

from the beginning, so as to send a message to the rest that theft would not

be tolerated. You, who had just thanked Jesus for your chips and guacamole,

said you agreed. They should be shot. Praise the Lord.

�

Your God is one with whom I am not familiar.

�

Two thoughts.

�

First, it is a very fortunate thing for you, and likely for me, that my two

young children were with me as I sat there, choking back fish tacos and my

own seething rage, listening to you pontificate about shit you know nothing

about.

�

Have you ever even been to New Orleans?

�

And no, by that I don't mean the New Orleans of your company's sales

conference. I don't mean Emeril's New Orleans, or the New Orleans of Uptown

Mardi Gras parties.

�

I mean the New Orleans that is buried as if it were Atlantis, in places like

the lower 9th ward: 98 percent black, 40 percent poor, where bodies are

floating down the street, flowing with the water as it seeks its own level.

Have you met the people from that New Orleans? The New Orleans that is dying

as I write this, and as you order another sweet tea?

�

I didn't think so.

�

Your God--the one to whom you prayed today, and likely do before every meal,

because this gesture proves what a good Christian you are--is one with whom

I am not familiar.

�

Your God is one who you sincerely believe gives a flying fuck about your

lunch. Your God is one who you seem to believe watches over you and blesses

you, and brings good tidings your way, while simultaneously letting

thousands of people watch their homes be destroyed, and perhaps ten thousand

or more die, many of them in the streets for lack of water or food.

�

Did you ever stop to think just what a rancid asshole such a God would have

to be, such that he would take care of the likes of you, while letting

babies die in their mother's arms, and old people in wheelchairs, at the

foot of Canal Street?

�

Your God is one with whom I am not familiar.

�

But no, it isn't God who's the asshole here, Skip (or Brad, or Braxton, or

whatever your name is).

�

God doesn't feed you, and it isn't God that kept me from turning around and

beating your lily white privileged ass today either.

�

God has nothing to do with it.

�

God doesn't care who wins the Super Bowl.

�

God doesn't help anyone win an Academy Award.

�

God didn't get you your last raise, or your SUV.

�

And if God is even half as tired as I am of having to listen to

self-righteous bastards like you blame the victims of this nightmare for

their fate, then you had best eat slowly from this point forward.

�

Why didn't they evacuate like they were told?

�

Are you serious?

�

There are 100,000 people in that city without cars. Folks who are too poor

to own their own vehicle, and who rely on public transportation every day. I

know this might shock you. They don't have a Hummer2, or whatever

gas-guzzling piece of crap you either already own or probably are saving up

for.

�

And no, they didn't just choose not to own a car because the buses are so

gosh-darned efficient and great, as Rush Limbaugh implied yesterday, and as

you likely heard, since you're the kind of person who hangs on the every

word of such bloviating hacks as these.

�

Why did they loot?

�

Are you serious?

�

People are dying, in the streets, on live television. Fathers and mothers

are watching their baby's eyes bulge in their skulls from dehydration, and

you are begrudging them some Goddamned candy bars, diapers and water?

�

If anything the poor of New Orleans have exercised restraint.

�

Maybe you didn't know it, but the people of that city with whom you likely

identify--the wealthy white folks of Uptown--were barely touched by this

storm. Yeah, I guess God was watching over them: protecting them, and

rewarding them for their faith and superior morality. If the folks downtown

who are waiting desperately for their government to send help--a government

whose resources have been stretched thin by a war that I'm sure you support,

because you love freedom and democracy--were half as crazed as you think,

they'd march down St. Charles Avenue right now and burn every mansion in

sight. That they aren't doing so suggests a decency and compassion for their

fellow man and woman that sadly people like you lack.

�

Can you even imagine what you would do in their place?

�

Can you imagine what would happen if it were well-off white folks stranded

like this without buses to get them out, without nourishment, without hope?

�

Putting aside the absurdity of the imagery--after all, such folks always

have the means to seek safety, or the money to rebuild, or the political

significance to ensure a much speedier response for their concerns--can you

just imagine?

�

Can you imagine what would happen if the pampered, overfed corporate class,

which complains about taxes taking a third of their bloated incomes, had to

sit in the hot sun for four, going on five days? Without a Margarita or

hotel swimming pool to comfort them I mean?

�

Oh, and please, I know. I'm stereotyping you. Imagine that. I've assumed,

based only on your words, what kind of person you are, even though I suppose

I could be wrong. How does that feel Biff? Hurt your feelings? So sorry. But

hey, at least my stereotypes of you aren't deadly. They won't effect your

life one bit, unlike the ones you carry around with you and display within

earshot of people like me, supposing that no one could possibly disagree.

�

But I'm not wrong am I Chip? I know you. I see people like you all the time,

in airports, in business suits, on their lunch breaks. People who will take

advantage of any opportunity to ratify and reify their pre-existing

prejudices towards the poor, towards black folks. You see the same three

video loops of the same dozen or so looters on Fox News and you conclude

that poor black people are crazy, immoral, criminal.

�

You, or others quite a bit like you, are the ones posting messages on chat

room boards, calling looters sub-human "vermin," "scum," or "cockroaches." I

heard you use the word "animals" three times today: you and that woman

across from you--what was her name? Skyler?

�

What was it you said as you scooped the last bite of black beans and rice

into your eager mouth? Like zoo animals? Yes, I think that was it.

�

Well Chuck, it's a free country, and so you certainly have the right I

suppose to continue lecturing the poor, in between checking your Blackberry

and dropping the kids off at soccer practice. If you want to believe that

the poor of New Orleans are immoral and greedy, and unworthy of support at a

time like this--or somehow more in need of your scolding than whatever

donation you might make to a relief fund--so be it.

�

But let's leave God out of it, shall we? All of it.

�

Your God is one with whom I am not familiar, and I'd prefer to keep it that

way.

�

�

�

Tim Wise is the author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a

Privileged Son (http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-932360-68-9).

He lived in New Orleans from 1986-1996. He can be reached at [email protected]

�

�

�