Do you think rasicm took part in Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina?

Question

ME and my friend Tyler have been arguing about it. she says no and i say yes. I need hard cold facts here people. please help me prove her wrong.Im looking for the best answers

Answer 1

I don't think race played into Ray Nagin's incompetence and indifference that led to every death that occurred during Katrina and during the flooding.

Fact: Mississippi ordered an evacuation 2 days before landfall.
Fact: Ray Nagin ordered an evacuation 19 hours before landfall.

Fact: Mississippi's OEM had evacuating plans in place for such an event.
Fact: NO had plans but abandoned them as being impractical to implement, they never redrew the plans.

Fact: Mississippi activated the National Guard two days prior to landfall to assist with an orderly evacuation.
Fact: Louisiana didn't activate the National Guard until 38 hours after Katrina passed to fill sand bags and recover bodies.

Fact: Congress quickly approved $122 billion dollars for grants and low interest loans to clean and rebuild New Orleans.
Fact: To date only $44 billion has been paid out because Nagin is not requesting the money. He expects a lump sum pay out, FEMA demands an explanation prior to approving the funds of allocations.

So the facts are in, Nagin is incompetent. Instead of being indicted for 1,600 counts of murder he got re-elected. So does anyone think that after Nagin gets his hands on all $122 billion that New Orleans will be any closer to being fixed? His progress to date hasn't impressed me, and it doesn't look like they're 1/3 of the way done cleaning and building, but thats how much money has been used.

Answer 2

I highly doubt that President Bush would allow racism influence his response to Katrina. The next thing you will hear is that Bush conjured up Katrina and made it hit New Orleans. There are so many other parts of the system that failed. The mayor of New Orleans and even the Governor of Louisiana knew that the hurricane was coming and could have prepared for it. The fact is that the people were ordered to leave the city however they did not want to leave their home. Even after the hurricane people still did not want to leave their home. I really truly feel for the people of New Orleans but I think that it is time to get over it and rebuild. Everybody can sit and complain about what happened but it takes a special person to realize that it happened and it needs to be fixed. I do not want to sound like a jerk but I think that some people stayed during the hurricane so that they can loot abandoned stores and homes.

Answer 3

We watched this storm come across south Florida, so it was no surprise to anyone. We saw it go into the gulf, we saw it gain strength, we knew it was pointed at New Orleans. This was all 5 days in advance. We knew before the storm hit (Saturday) that the President contacted that mayor and strongly urged him to order mandatory evacuations. The storm missed New Orleans. yea! .....but the Levey's didn't hold. Where did the money go that was sent to re-enforce the Levey's? New Casino and conference center. Where were all the buses .....just around around the corner. Where were the national guard? They are controlled by the state. You had to be deaf and blind to not see that the mayor and the governor do not like each other. The President by all legal avenues could not come in until those two morons put their ego's aside and let the feds take over. There were thousands and thousands of people that were left homeless because of this storm. There house wasn't flooded, it was gone. So for you say this had anything to do with racism is grossly inaccurate on your part. This was all due to inept local/state politicians and a population of people who bet they would be okay and they all lost.

Answer 4

That's a tough question...the first failure that happened, the one that precipitated all the others, was the failure of the City Of New Orleans to evacuate its' citizens once they realized there was a problem and a danger from flooding/levee breaches. The next level of failure was in the Louisiana state government. Finally, FEMA or FEBL, as it is now known, failed to use its' resources in a wise manner to take over and get everyone to safety.

All in all, it was one ugly spectacle, and the race card has been thrown due to the fact that a lot of people in New Orleans were black. But, the true failure in some people's minds got re-elected back to the same job he held before Katrina hit, the mayor himself. Now, no one's perfect, but it doesn't take brain surgery to go park a cop car in a danger area and leave the siren running constantly, and have every radio station in town start telling people to evacuate etc., basically make it so there's no way someone would NOT know that there was danger coming.

The weather channel warned people THREE days in advance that Katrina was probably coming ashore, but people kind of farted it off. I'll bet they watch the weather channel NOW...
In ancient Pompeii, they knew they lived next to a volcano, but the locals just kind of blew it off and figured that since nothing had happened, nothing was GOING to happen. Boy, did they get a surprise! LOL Darwin's a real *******, he's color blind, and when he teams up with Mother Nature, move your puny mortal human butt OUT of the way...no amount of government 'help' can truly compensate for stupidity and stubbornness...

Answer 5

I think it absolutely did. I'll see if I can find some examples to link to in the URL section. If you do a search on "Bush Katrina racism" or "Bush Katrina racist" you'll probably find others.

It wasn't just Bush, though - there were many heartbreaking examples. The group of (predominantly) African Americans trying to leave the Astrodome who were greeted by the group of armed police officers as they tried to cross a bridge. The last time I checked, U.S. citizens were supposed to have free movement around the country. And then there were Barbara Bush's "sensitive" comments about the refugees being housed in the Astrodome, saying that the refugees were "underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

From a more political point of view, many of the African-Americans in New Orleans were Democrats. It has been and will be very convenient for the Republican base in Louisiana to have that group of people dispersed.

And here we are, a year later. A massive number of people, many of them African-American, are still displaced. I suspect that if it had been a wealthy, predominantly white area that had been hit by the hurricane, we'd see gleaming new buildings erected by now. Instead, the mayor of New Orleans is still wrestling with proposals that threaten to hang many of the African American residents out to dry.

But perhaps I'm wrong. Just for fun, let's send a hurricane to annihilate Florida and see how the Bush Administration and everyone else responds compared to the way they did for Katrina.

Mr. Bush says he wasn't influenced by racism. And as my husband often tells me, people can say anything - but actions don't lie.

Answer 6

RACISM WAS NOT A FACTOR. IT WAS THE BLACK AND WHITE POLITICIANS (BUT ALL DEMOCRATS) WHO CONTROL THE NEW ORLEANS LEVEE BOARDS FOR THE LAST 30 YEARS WHO TOOK BRIBES INSTEAD OF IMPROVING THE SYSTEM THAT WAS DESTINED TO FAIL.

The failures weren't due to construction malfeasance or incompetence: "The system was built as designed," the Corps concluded. But the system was, in many ways, conceived to fail. In the Corps' view, it was inconsistently designed and lacked redundancy - that is, back-up protections.

Some levees, in particular the ones with wide foundations, performed well, withstanding days of water pressure with little erosion. But floodwalls designed as narrow vertical walls driven into the ground performed abysmally.

The pressure of Katrina's waters wore away the walls' narrow vertical foundations because they weren't "armored" with erosion-proof material, causing the structures to topple into the water. And because the system wasn't redundant, each break caused more weaknesses.

Why didn't the Corps design a consistent, redundant system? In some cases, political opposition prevented the Corps from seizing land to build sturdier foundations. Plus, Louisiana's local levee boards were lousy stewards. Levee officials were political animals, not engineering experts, and sometimes proved more interested in running ancillary "economic development" projects than working with the Corps to make sure the levees were up to their task. (It's not because New Orleans was poor and black: the levees protect New Orleans' richer, whiter suburbs too.) In addition, the Corps warned that many of New Orleans' manmade canals should be closed or at least gated - to no avail.

Answer 7

I don't have cold hard facts - more's the pity, but I remember that the question came up real early in the aftermath. Some blacks said yes, some said no. (How they could think so logically at that time is amazing, but they did). My personal conclusion was that it was not a matter of race, but a matter of money. Or possibly party affiliation, which came to the same thing. As for the salvation of the Quarter, that was a matter of wealthy people's investment.

Answer 8

nicely, one element you may nicely be certain of is that a organic disaster of this value has not got here approximately in an particularly long term, and Bush's administration might desire to not be prepaired. i think of what rather occurred is that rather some human beings did not attempt to evacuate, out of having a loss of money and potential to hold all the flaws that they have got collected for the time of their existence. not everybody predicted that the hurricane could reason such complete and considerable disaster. it fairly is sorta like in case you observed a pal trip on a banana, then fall down a fleight of stairs, and wreck his tooth on the banister; you have been probably in simple terms sitting there taken aback that it even went down like that. once you likely gave them in simple terms a splash help, even though it wasnt sufficient to make up for what occurred. i don't think of that his loss of suggestions became fullyyt through race, nevertheless it does look an exceptionally basic end to attain through fact there have been such rather some african individuals interior the photos of the aftermath. it rather is particularly confusing to tutor, although, that Bush's racism quickly contributed to this. Bush takes little or no direct accountability for something.

Answer 9

No matter what happens in this world someone always screems " Racist ".
If a black robs a bank and gets caught, he'll claim he was put in jail just because he's black. Robbing the bank had nothing to do with it.
If a black politition refuses to show her identification as required, she doesn't have to because she's black. The cop is a racist.
Whenever a black politition looses an election, it's because the voters are racist.
Whenever a black entertainer or sports player makes billions of dollars it's because they're that good, in spite of all the racism they had to fight against.
So, to answer your question as to whether there was racism at Katrina - - - - if there was a single black person there then there was racism ( in all black people's minds ).

Answer 10

i think racism just lived and breathed in the city of new orleans, yes of course Bush made multiple errors, but the situation was a problem that should have been changed before Katrina hit. the poor black people who lived in poverty had their homes in the area of the city where, if the levees broke, they would be the 1st to die. the wealthy white people lived in the hills (the french quarters) and if the levees broke would be affected but survive. furthur more, those wealthy white people can afford train tickets and flight tickets to get out. if you are in poverty you cannot. this is the epitemy of RACISM.