'To Me, It Just Seems Like Black People Are Marked'

[undergroundrailroad]

washingtonpost.com
'To Me, It Just Seems Like Black People Are Marked'
By Wil Haygood
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 2, 2005; A01


BATON ROUGE, La., Sept. 1 -- It seemed a desperate echo of a bygone era, a mass of desperate-looking black folk on the run in the Deep South. Some without shoes.

It was high noon Thursday at a rest stop on the edge of Baton Rouge when several buses pulled in, fresh from the calamity of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Hundreds piled out, dragging themselves as if floating through some kind of thick liquid. They were exhausted, some crying.

"It was like going to hell and back," said Bernadette Washington, 38, a black homemaker from Orleans Parish who had slept under a bridge the night before with her five children and her husband. She sighed the familiar refrain, stinging as an old-time blues note: "All I have is the clothes on my back. And I been sleeping in them for three days."

While hundreds of thousands of people have been dislocated by Hurricane Katrina, the images that have filled the television screens have been mainly of black Americans -- grieving, suffering, in some cases looting and desperately trying to leave New Orleans. Along with the intimate tales of family drama and survival being played out Thursday, there was no escaping that race had become a subtext to the unfolding drama of the hurricane's aftermath.

"To me," said Bernadette Washington, "it just seems like black people are marked. We have so many troubles and problems."

"After this," her husband, Brian Thomas, said, "I want to move my family to California."

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[bliss_eternal]

1. The images I have seen remind me of the old

civil rights footage. It's the imperfect blend of slavery era, civil rights blacks hosed in the streets and the WW2 camps maintained by the Nazis.

Blacks are being told when they can leave or not leave, if they can eat, etc., etc.... It's inhumane.

This administration should be tried for crimes against humanity.

While I don't blame that man for wanting to move his family to CA--we gotta' get rid of Schwarzennegger first. He's trying to turn this into a fascist state.

:mad:

[undergroundrailroad]

2. Great post! Thanks for your comments.

Undergroundrailroad :hi:

[msgadget]

3. Absolutely, bliss,

and this has got to be a catalyst for the same kind of brave, civic action. This administration works overtime marketing their agenda by scaring, tricking, manipulating and dividing us against ourselves and these next few days and weeks are for saying NO MORE! The people of color in that carefully chosen cabinet should be cringing, ashamed to show their faces. And, maybe this will even help get rid of Ahnold and his fascist agenda even quicker.

I was greatly heartened to see the NAACP, et al, back to their old goals - advancing our people. Let's join and speak out at every opportunity.

[bliss_eternal]

4. I'm also thrilled to see the black leaders of the country

come together.

I hope and pray that it lasts!

You don't have to tell me twice. No one will be able to get me to shut up about what I've seen--no way, no how.

I wonder what that black church in GA that supported the boy king thinks of their leader now?

[Brewman_Jax]

5. This is not an exaggeration

Reading Tim Wise's articles and watching PBS specials and other sources, the statistics are staggering, and that's before the hurricane.

-adult black males are about 3% of the population, yet are almost half of the prison population.

-unemployment for black people runs about double the national average.

-all economics equal, black people will not receive equal levels of medical treatment.

There are more stats, and they are terrible.