Katrina exposes our callous treatment of the poor

[struggle4progress]

By Cynthia Tucker
Wed Sep 7, 6:21 PM ET

Here in America, the land of opportunity, we gave up on the poor more than two decades ago. Under the careful tutelage of Ronald Reagan and other conservatives, we learned that the poor were simply too lazy to improve their prospects and their misery was their own fault.

We gave up on the white poor and the black poor, even though black Americans had suffered under three centuries of unconscionable oppression before a brief period -- less than three decades -- when they began to be treated as fully human. We gave up on the Native American poor, though they had been the victims of a historic savagery amounting to a holocaust.

We not only gave up trying to help the poor, but we also bought the argument that trying to assist them, especially through government programs, would just make matters worse. After all, years of relentless right-wing radio have taught us that the poor are illiterate, sick and jobless because of government welfare policies -- or because they choose to be. So we turned our backs on the impoverished and tuned them out, leaving them stranded in the worst neighborhoods, worst schools and the worst geography -- next to landfills, on top of toxic dumps, in the swamps.

So the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina -- with its pathetic images of desperately poor people, mostly black people, stuck in New Orleans without food, water or adequate shelter after all the affluent people had fled -- should come as no surprise. This is a natural consequence of a political and social culture that has decreed: You're poor? Why would anyone want to be poor? Tough luck. You're on your own. <snip>

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucas/20050907/cm_ucas/katrinaexposesourcalloustreatmentofthepoor

[wanpete]

1. cynthis tucker is a great op.ed. writer for the AJC...she's a breath

of fresh air in a sometimes stagnant place-repug gov and two very repuke senators.