My nephew sent me these two Yahoo news photo pages from the flooding from hurricane Katrina. He captioned them as follows:

White people "find": http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/photos_ts_afp/050830071810_shxwaoma_photo1

Black kid "loots": http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/480/ladm10208301530

Read the captions that go along with both photos. Racism is not-so-subtly alive and well in the media!

For those who haven't checked out the links, the first photo has a white couple in chest deep floodwaters. The news photo's byline has them "finding bread and soda from a local grocery store..." The second photo of a black youth, in an identical situation, has the byline of him "...after looting a grocery store..."

It's so sad how there is still predjudice. The black community accepts us more than we accept them. A coupla Sundays ago I was in the Food Lion grocery store with my mom & saw a poster advertising that the well known black gospel group the Sensational Nightingales was doing a free concert that evening at a black church in a subdivision next to where we live. I thought Mike & I oughta go. So when I got back I told Mike about i & said lets go. So we went & had a great time. We were the only white folks there but they accepted us & folks hugged us hello & they were so glad to see new folks there. We got to meet one of the guys in the group & he was so nice & so was the preacher who we met. One of the group members Jo Jo had been singing for over 60's yrs so he had to have been in his 80's but he was so spry. When they said if anyone wants to jump up & praise the Lord to go jump up. This one elderly black man with gray hair jumped up & down several times like a Mexican jumping bean & he was so spry. So neat! Afterwards they had free watermelon for everyone. It was sad to see how so many white folks missed a great time simply cuz they let either predjudice or being afraid they'd be out of place in a black church keep them from going. God led me to have a great time with our black brothers. Btw, if they ever come to your area go. You'll enjoy it...

And, not surprisingly, the black community has suffered the most in the Katrina tragedy. Economics being what it is, it turns out that in New Orleans, the poorer you are, the farther below sea level you live. Unfortunately, when the water recedes, there will be sobering evidence of the extent of black loss.

It should be interesting to see how Bush and the Republicans deal with this disaster; I'm predicting that it will expose him for the ineffectual doofus he really is. After all, one of the reasons we've got no National Guard in the area now is that they're all overseas!

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Captain Zap:

For those who haven't checked out the links, the first photo has a white couple in chest deep floodwaters. The news photo's byline has them "finding bread and soda from a local grocery store..." The second photo of a black youth, in an identical situation, has the byline of him "...after looting a grocery store..."<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

If they were Italians, it woulda said that they were a big organized crime ring looting stores.

Just a point in fact: those two pictures and their captions are used on Yahoo, but come from other sources ... the picture of the black man was from AP, while the picture of the white couple was from AFP/Getty ... I believe the captions are from those sources as well, so comparing them may be unfair. If they both came from the same source, then this complaint would seem valid to me.

Here is Yahoo's statement.

Just thought that a glimpse at the demographics of New Orleans would be of interest...

Demographics

Roughly 67% of the population is African-American...
Roughly 53% of the population live[d] in rental units.
Roughly 25% of families are single mom families.
The median family income is roughly $31,000, while the national average is roughly $44,000.

My heart is crying for those whose lives have been forever changed.

Not so much a complaint, Wyld, as a comment. And yes, I was aware that they were from different sources. Regardless of the sources, it still seems (to me and a lot of other people, as well)like the motivations of people involved in similar circumstances are still subject to the eye of the beholder, as the intentions of the reporters are subject to their readers.