The print edition of the 09/19/05 issue of Business Week carries a column by Mark Naison that looks at how Katrina showed Black Poverty's Human Face. (Link is subscribers only.)
He compares the impact of this event to the 1927 Mississippi River flood:
Indeed, not since the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 (when 330,000 blacks were displaced to camps) has the economic and racial isolation of the black poor been rendered in such stark relief by an environmental calamity. What the images Americans saw on the evening news revealed about who was dying, who was trapped, who was without food, who was drinking contaminated water - and, yes, who was looting - should give us all pause. Is this what the pioneers of the Civil Rights Movement fought to achieve - a society in which black people are as trapped and isolated by their poverty as they were by segregation laws?
He also comments on the effect of media images in Katrina that I found interesting in how it relates to another issue. I've been thinking lately about the argument that has become canonical for Republicans that the TV coverage of Vietnam undercut public support for the war. This argument, at least in the way it usually appears, is seriously flawed.
On the other hand, TV images can be very important in bringing the news that the public needs to act as informed citizens, and I wouldn't want to underestimate the harm that excessive press restrictions do to democracy. So I thought this statement of the impact of TV images from New Orleans captured how such images can work in a way that doesn't deny the complexity of how that process occurs:
Perhaps the only good to come from Katrina's wake will be those very images that chronicled its horror. The sight of tens of thousands of desperate black people crying for help outside the Superdome and the New Orleans Convention Center have had the same effect on viewers as the shots of Bull Connor turning firehoses and dogs on teenage demonstrators in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963. A hundred years from now, people will regard those pictures as symbols of American civilization at the dawn of the 21st century and of the continued isolation of poor blacks within the wealthiest nation on earth.
One of the things I learned living through, and participating in, the civil rights movement of the 1960s is the importance of visual images. Without TV footage and news photos of segregationists beating peaceful demonstrators, the full horror of Southern segregation would have never mobilized either a world audience or the American public. Now, via Katrina, concentrated, racialized poverty in America has a human face it never had before. And that face will live on in people's memories and nightmares as a permanent part of the historical record. How we deal with those images, and the conditions they reflect, will define the character of this nation for decades to come. (my emphasis)
5 comments:
Bruce,
This is brilliant. Really. I love this post.
You are right -- the images are critical to capturing a truth that would escape us otherwise.
A friend tells me I "have to see the pictures on TV". She knows I never turn the tube on. i rely on newspapers, public radio, and internet sources. I have told her that TV is for the retarded -- the rest of us can grasp the meaning of the story without lots of film footage.
But, even today, there is power in scenes of fire hoses and dogs in Birmingham. And I am sure that long after the physical damage of Katrina has been repaired, the images of destitute, dead, and distraught poor black folks in New Orleans will move us, and remind us of the reality of poverty and of the legacy of our racist past.
I hope those images have the power to move the hearts of Americans. I hope those images will open their eyes, and motivate their minds.
But my guess is that they will quickly forget, and move on to more agreeable and diverting pleasures.
But thanks anyway for just a great piece of work on your part. I rarely change my mind, but you made me see this from a new angle. Thanks.
Neil
I think one reason that the mainstream press momentarily acted like real journalists is that disasters, tragedies and "coping" are themes with which they are comfortable.
But also, it does sound like some of the jouralists - even from FOX! - were so moved by the obvious human tragedies that they couldn't just stick with White House spin points or a hollow this-side-said, the-other-side-said format.
As much as the media have changed in the last 35 years since Vice President Spiro Agnew was running around raving about the Liberal Media conspiracy, one general guideline is still true. If you read about the story in the print media, you will get a better understanding of it than if you see it on TV. If you read and watch reports about the same event from several different sources, you'll understand it better than from just one.
Unfortunately, a big majority of the country get their news primarily from TV. And, as you said, most of the time the TV news is so vapid as to be nearly worthless. But, at least for a few days, our press corps actually functioned as a press corps. - Bruce
the residents affected by Katrina happened to be black. If Bel Air is hit by an earthquake and destroyed, most of those people will be white. Big deal, it is what it is and it certainly is racism.
Also, nobody is starving in this country. Nobody. People are trapped in America, where even if they are the poorest of the poor, they get $2000 debit cards.
How many $2000 debit cards did Indonesia give out after the tsunami?
I'm guessing none.
Yeah, America is evil.
obviously i meant to say that it ISN'T racism.
;)
The first time around may have been a Freduian slip, but it's more accurate.
In the real world, white racism is a major factor that has resulted in African-Americans being disproportionately poor.
As for starvation, what's that have to do with poverty in America? There are only a few places in the world where starvation is a threat on a large scale, and Indonesia is not one of them, either. - Bruce
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