Racism? Let me tell you a story

[Bruce Olin]

Hurricane Katrina
Racism? Let me tell you a story
By CHRIS TISCH, Times Staff Writer
Published September 4, 2005
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/09/04/Worldandnation/Racism_Let_me_tell_yo.shtml

NEW ORLEANS - I want to introduce you to Clarence Smith. I met him while
covering Hurricane Katrina's destruction of New Orleans this week.

Clarence did something remarkable after Katrina hit.

He was one of those who stayed. He and thousands of others were plucked from
roofs and brought to dry land at the base of a bridge in eastern New
Orleans. The bridge spanned a moderately damaged neighborhood to the west
side of where the floodwaters reached 20 feet or more.

After these people were rescued, the National Guard carried many of them to
the Superdome, which I would estimate was up to 5 miles away. But about 200
were left behind, boxed in by floodwaters on all sides.

They formed a makeshift camp, but had no food or water. Tempers flared. The
daytime heat was astonishing. The nighttime darkness was terrifying. Almost
all were black.

They had been there nearly 24 hours when my colleague Aaron Sharockman (who
is white, like me) steered our sport utility vehicle through murky,
fuel-slicked water that was more than 3 feet deep, and found them. Clarence
had become their ad hoc leader.

A tall and muscular black man in a blue tank top, Clarence saw me talking
with folks in the camp. I saw him, too, because he was pulling a wagon full
of food and water, which he was handing out to people. He approached me.

Clarence, 44, made it clear from the start that he was grateful he and his
wife had been rescued from the roof of their home. But then he told me how
these people were abandoned, how old people were withering without medicine,
how injured people were near death. An old lady passed out on the concrete
while we talked.

I wrote down what he said. After a while, I asked where he got the food and
water. He looked down and said some good Samaritans brought it. I knew that
wasn't true. I told him if he broke into nearby shops for food and water, I
didn't think anyone could blame him. He admitted that's where the stuff came
from.

Clarence told me he wanted police there for security, to break up fights. He
also knew a neighboring area, which had not been nearly as hard hit, was
full of white people who were not welcoming to members of the camp.

I knew this, too. We had interviewed a white resident who lived there. He
described an enclave that feared the group of black people. He said many
residents were armed and organized.

He mentioned nothing of helping them, even as he tried to joke to us: "The
natives are getting hungry." We didn't laugh.

I asked Clarence why it seemed black people had been especially hard hit in
the storm. He pointed to the camp and said that was my answer.

Those in charge, Clarence told me, don't care about poor, black people. Time
and again, they are left behind.

"This isn't 1965," he told me. "This shouldn't be happening."

His suspicion of people in power was so resonant that he, like many black
people in New Orleans, believed the city purposefully broke the levy that
flooded their neighborhood so the famous French Quarter and white areas of
town could be spared.

I don't think New Orleans should be singled out. Many - if not all - major
U.S. cities have poor black sections that are in ragged parts of town,
farther away from emergency services or neglected by other city departments.
This is a national problem.

But never have the results of systematic and latent racism been so obvious
and painful. Thousands of people of one race died because of it. If I were a
black leader in New Orleans, I would be enraged. Heck, I'm a white guy from
St. Petersburg and I'm enraged.

So, if anyone ever tells you the days of segregation and racism are long
gone, please remind them of Katrina and New Orleans.

And also remind them of this about Clarence. Remember I told you he did
something remarkable?

Three people at the camp were old white ladies taken from a retirement home.
Before I left the camp, I saw Clarence taking them food and water.

He gave those white ladies more than he had given to anyone else in the
camp - including himself.

If only all of us were so blind to wealth and color.

Chris Tisch can be reached at ti...@sptimes.com

[Last modified September 4, 2005, 01:22:09]
--
"The first casualty of war is not truth, but perspective.
Once that's gone, truth, like compassion, reason,
and all the other virtues, wanders around like a wounded orphan."

Ente Grillenhaft