life through pink colour glasses: Colours of a Hurricane

Sunday, September 04, 2005

Colours of a Hurricane

Go to any newsy website or news channel and hurricane Katrina is definitely one of the top three headlines. Read and see pictures of the poor calamity stricken citizens of New Orleans trying to get food, trying to escape disease and ravagers and looters. Read about the media's outrage at how not enough is being done. Read a local newspaper and see how the Indian media can't get over the fact that these are pictures of America. These are images we are used to seeing from Africa or India, not the world's richest and most powerful nation.

And it's not just the disaster struck city that resembles poor third world countries. Noticed how all these people are black? Amid outstretched hands hungry for food and forlorn faces mourning a lost loved one, there isn't a single white hand or face. There are no white people looting pharmacies and electronic stores. There are no white kids staring into the camera, wondering where their parents are.

It gets me wondering, do disasters not strike the white people of the world? Who ever heard of Europeans going on a looting rampage after a natural calamity struck? No, that's what happened in India when the earth quake struck Latur, all those years ago. Who ever heard of a disease outbreak after too much rainfall amongst white people? Nope, that again happened in Mumbai after the recent floods. Hundreds of fishermen and their families die in Orissa every year, either due to drought or flood. And yet every year, when there's a hurricane in Florida all one hears about is some property damage and maybe one or two people getting injured. And if someone dies, the white people of the city come together to pray amongst candles and flowers. It's all very civilized and rather beautiful actually.

So when finally nature directs its wrath towards a prosperous western nation, how come it's again the non-whites who suffer? Obviously there were white people in the city of New Orleans but somehow they all managed to get away. So are non-white races of the world really somehow not as good then? Bosnian refugees don't look as pitiable as the tragedy struck victims of New Orleans, and they've been going through war for a few years now!

Maybe it's not really a function of race. It is a function of your economic state. The people who are suffering and who got left behind are the poor of New Orleans.

So then how come all the poor in New Orleans are black?

Posted by that girl in pink | 11:50 am | 1 comments

1 Comments

at 12:17 pm Anonymous said...: To borrow from a fellow XIC-ian would often raise his hand and say in class, Pinky aunty you have raised a very "pertinent" point. Think u shud try and get this blog of urs published...