Colin Powell, in an ABC 20/20 interview to be shown later this week, said this:
"...it [the failed response to Katrina] wasn't a racial thing --- but poverty disproportionately affects African-Americans in this country. And it happened because they were poor."
The story on the interview is here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/usweatherpowell;_ylt=AmsSU72Q57cHx7pOblY3.Ois0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxB
HNlYwN0bQ--
Well, despite the apparent racial factor in the New Orleans non-response, I think he's right. Is racism evil? You bet. But racism has been consciously deployed by right-wing elements in this country for at least 150 years in order to distract, divert, and prevent poorer whites and poorer blacks from making common cause. In fighting racism qua racism, we are fighting a fight that the right is happy for us to fight.
Much the same is true with our fighting religious fanaticism, environmental degradation, anti-abortion, a flag-burning amendment, etc. By getting us flailing away at a hundred separate fires, the ruling class (don't kid yourself there isn't one that sees itself as such) successfully inhibits lower economic classes developing a consciousness of a larger picture and a broader solidarity that could subsume and defuse racial, religious, and ethnic divisions. Part of the reason this tactic works is because our economic class is, we are encouraged to hope, subject to improvement, whether through hard work or winning the lottery, while our race is not. Keeping hope alive in this sense (sorry, Jesse) helps the right because it inhibits acceptance of an economic class identity that could serve as a broader basis for political identification and action.
Should we ignore race and racism then? No, of course not. Ignorance is no solution. But we have to deal with race and racism in a broader context so that our politics are more inclusive, coherent, and cogent. Resolution of problems of race and racism needs to come from a more broadly and positively animating politics. Maybe economic class could provide the broader context. On the other hand, class identity has not so far shown itself to be a particular successful mobilizing principle in the U.S. Maybe the hope of the lower classes that their class position is only temporary (the upper class does not share that hope) makes class identity fatally flawed as a basis for lower class political mobilization. But if that is so, what then will be that unifying broader context? Social justice? The apparently forgotten American ideal of equality? Something more ideological than objective? We need something, because what we have isn't working, as the failure in New Orleans underscores. Still, I think it's a positive sign that Powell, however discredited he may be in the eyes of some, is speaking out about American problems of race and class in the same interview.