This is obviously very complicated, and I’m just a gal who reads the news and forms my opinions… I understand that decisions are made at the highest levels and often all we can really do is react. But the images I’m seeing - they make me very angry, and they make me feel like, perhaps after all, we haven’t really come that far in improving the lot of black folks in this country.

I really don’t know what to think. After looking around and seeing this, I feel just gross being associated with people who are saying the same thing I am.

The only thing that still seems true to me is that every time you look at people in need as “black” (or in the case of last year’s tsunami, “Asian”) instead of just “people,” that’s racist. Even if we think we have people’s best interests at heart — it just becomes “we need to draw attention to the plight of the black people” instead of “we need to help.”

And instead of its dissolving away and becoming the non-issue it deserves to be, it just keeps getting pulled back up to the forefront and it, for lack of a better word, colors our perceptions of what’s really important. But I dunno — maybe that’s as simple-minded as calling for hugs and a group sing-along, or maybe it’s as evil and self-serving as the press secretary shouting out “blame game” at everyone.

While it does sound ridiculous to think that somehow race had something to do with the levees breaking (and according to “60 minutes” and some other news sources, the levees held up–it was the flood-walls that broke. But of course, it’s all part of the same system, and is ultimately neither here or there) but I, again, do think that race (and economics) did play a part in how much money was given to the City. Politicians don’t have to worry about pleasing communities that don’t have deep pockets.

I’m not black so I can’t speak from personal experiences of racism. But I don’t think that racism is small-scale. At ALL. I think it’s ingrained, and insidious, and it’s only at times like this that it really becomes glaringly apparent.

I’ve never been good at arguing a political position, so maybe I should just stop. Plus, I don’t want to appear to be one those people who are just “looking for angles,” because, again, I don’t think race was the ONLY cause of the government’s piss-poor response.

And anyone who does think that is a….what’s the opposite of a Pollyanna?

I’m not going to say for one second that we’ve solved the race problem; I still leave the bubble of SF and fly down to GA three times a year. But at least in my lifetime and my experience, racism has always been small scale. It’s white families moving out of neighborhoods to avoid the brown people, or somebody with some petty grievance about losing his job or not getting a promotion or getting cut off in traffic or trash on the street and using race as a justification.

As far as I can see, it’s only after the fact — when people are trying to come up with some solution for some social ill, or an explanation for a court ruling, riot, disaster, or failure of a community — that people bring race into the picture.

So at what level did race cause the reaction and mishandling of the disaster? Did someone actually say, “Those people are mostly black and they deserve it, so we won’t help?” Was it longer-term cutting funding and not sending support to make sure that the levees were secure and the city was safe, because it’s a predominately black constitutency? Are we supposed to believe that it was subliminal? What’s the mind-set here?

I don’t believe for one second that race did not play a large part in how this shit went down.

But I do think you’re right in that it probably has a lot to do with people being poor, too.