This was forwarded from another list (see below).
I looked at these posts this morning (Friday) and the "find" picture was
removed by AFP.
However, if you look at this link you can see the "another black man
'looting'" and the "find" picture side-by-side (with some interesting
comments):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/triciawang/38922728/
-Ed Tennant
-----Original Message-----
From: H-NET Discussion List for African American Studies
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Alkalimat, Abdul
Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2005 12:43 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: "looting" and "finding" food in New Orleans
From: doreen hopkins [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Black male "looting":
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/480/ladm10908301723
text: "A looter carries a bucket of beer out of a grocery store in New
Orleans on Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005, as floodwaters continue to rise in New
Orleans after Hurricane Katrina made landfall on Monday. (AP Photo/Dave
Martin)"
Another Black male "looting":
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/480/ladm10208301530
text: "A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a
grocery store in New Orleans on Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005. Flood waters
continue to rise in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina did extensive damage
when it...."
Other people "find":
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/photos_ts_afp/050830071810_shxwaoma_photo
1
text: "Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and
soda from a local grocery store after Hurricane Katrina came through the
area in New Orleans, Louisiana.(AFP/Getty Images/Chris Graythen)"
'Looting' Vs. 'Finding': Hurricane Katrina Exposes Racial Bias
By Carmen Cusido
---------------------------------
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September 01, 2005
Hurricane Katrina washed away more than homes and buildings; it also exposed
race and class inequities and media bias toward blacks. After the hurricane,
news reports showed many New Orleans residents going into closed stores and
running away with food, clothes, appliances and guns.
Here's the million-dollar question: Are white people "finding" something to
eat while black people are "looting" for lunch in New Orleans and other
flooded areas? Yes, if you look at the mainstream media. Then again, the
majority of low-income people in New Orleans are black and many are
starving.
For the world to see, there were too many images, but two stand out-one shot
by an AFP/Getty Images photographer and another by The Associated Press
(AP)-and each had a different caption when published on Yahoo.com. In the AP
photograph, the photo shows a black person with some food. The caption below
the picture says he's just finished "looting" a grocery store. The other
photo showed two white people with the caption describing how they were
"finding" bread and soda from a grocery store, BoingBoing.Net reports. In
both pictures, the subjects are swimming, holding food, with no stores in
sight.
The difference in words may be indicative of racial bias in the mainstream
media. Christina Pazzanese wrote in a Poynter.org forum for the
media-studies organization that in the national "crisis-mode" coverage of
the aftermath of Katrina, there have been a number of professional
challenges for everyone in the media around racial and economic sensitivity.
"I am curious how one photographer knew the food was looted by one but not
the other ... Should editors in a rush to publish poignant or startling
images relax their standards or allow personal or regional biases to creep
into captions and stories?" Pazzanese asks. We all should be asking that
question too.
Yes, most of those left behind in that flooded city are poor, black people.
The U.S. Census Bureau reports that New Orleans is 67.3 percent black and
28.1 percent white. Columnist Earl Ofari Hutchinson on BlackNews.com said
the looting, though deplorable, put an ugly face on the millions of
Americans who grow poorer and more desperate. While criminal gangs, who
always take advantage of chaos and misery to snatch and grab whatever they
can, did much of the looting, many desperately poor, mostly black residents,
saw a chance to take items and food they can't afford. New Orleans, Ofari
Hutchinson writes, has one of the highest poverty rates of any of America's
big cities, and many people live in the most dilapidated, deteriorated
housing in the nation.
Many are criticizing the decision to have troops focus on capturing looters
instead of helping to rescue thousands of refugees who soon will die of
hunger and thirst. The looters may as well take advantage of the food that
would rot anyway, they say, as people who are starving and left with no
other option but to take the food.
Dante Lee of BlackNews.com comments, "As for the stealing of TVs and DVD
players, I would agree that this is inexcusable. However, food and drinks
are critical to their survival. But these aren't the only necessities in
life - What about baby diapers, toilet tissue, shoes, dry clothes? People
have to do what they can to survive."
After the rainstorm comes, the "human storm" hurricanes leave behind, writes
columnist David Brooks in The New York Times. Books referred to the human
storm as the recriminations, the political conflict and the battle over
compensation.
The floods wash away the surface of society (registration required) and
expose the underlying power structures, the injustices, the patterns of
corruption and the inequalities.
In 1900, another great storm hit the United States, killing more than 6,000
people in Galveston, Texas. The storm exposed racial animosities, and there
were (false) stories of blacks of cutting off the fingers of corpses to
steal wedding rings. The devastation ended Galveston's chance to beat out
Houston as Texas's leading port.
Then in 1927, the Mississippi flood rumbled down on New Orleans. During that
time. blacks were rounded up into work camps and held by armed guards. The
racist violence that followed the floods helped persuade many blacks to move
north, Brooks writes.
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