Weighing In On "The Apprentice"

I have been a huge fan of "The Apprentice" since Season One. I tune in every Thursday to watch the contestants complete their tasks and I love watching the drama unfold in the apartment and in the boardroom. There's always someone you love to hate and someone you're rooting for to take it all. This season, it seemed from the beginning that Randal Pinkett, an African-American male, was poised from the beginning to be the big winner. He was a natural leader, he won all three tasks that he managed, and when teams were asked to bring a contestant over from another team, Randal was always the top choice. In addition, he has five degrees, including degrees from Oxford and M.I.T. He has a Ph.D. and is a Rhodes Scholar. He owns a multi-million dollar consulting firm and is a charismatic public speaker. And he's NICE. Every other contestant, with the exception of Toral, felt Randal should be the winner.

Randal's competition was Rebecca Jarvis, a 23-year-old financial journalist from Chicago. While intelligent and tough, she was certainly no match for Randal. Furthermore, her record as a project manager was 1 win and 2 losses. And during the final task, not only did she not raise any money for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, she completely lost sight of the fact that the CHARITY was her client, not Yahoo. So she tried to appease Yahoo, and in doing so, did not raise any money that evening for the charity. She also did not go out to meet Trump when he arrived in his limo (Randal did go out to meet Trump when he arrived in his helicopter). She made some huge mistakes.

So Trump hired Randal, which was the obvious choice; HOWEVER, after he hired Randal he did something that was unforgivable, in my estimation. He asked Randal if he felt he should hire Rebecca too! He completely put Randal on the spot, and basically gave Randal the power to make that decision. I applaud Randal's decision--he said that there was ONE Apprentice, and that while he respected Rebecca's talent, he felt there was one job.

This has caused much division and uproar. Some people immediately have jumped to the conclusion that Randal was selfish and arrogant not to share his victory with Rebecca, and by doing so, he would have lost nothing. Others feel that he did the right thing, and that Trump should have never put Randal in that position in the first place, and that if the tables were turned, and Randal were white and Rebecca were black, this would not have happened.

I happen to agree with the second camp. Randal was by far a superior candidate to Rebecca. It was obvious to almost every contestant and if one were to look back at previous seasons, Trump has NEVER asked the Apprentice to share his/her victory, and in both Seasons One and Two, the runners-up were much more highly qualified than Rebecca. Kwame Jackson from Season One was a Harvard graduate with an impeccable resume. Yes, he made some mistakes on his final task, but so did Rebecca. Jennifer from Season Two was an accomplished attorney and very well-spoken, and she lost because her record as a Project Manager was not as good as Kelly's, just as Rebecca's record was not as good as Randal's perfect record. (Season Three there was no contest--Kendra was clearly superior to Tana.) So now we're in Season Four and we have a highly capable, highly educated, extremely experienced African-American male who can run circles around a young, white female, and he's put in the position of asking to SHARE his victory? Something is very wrong here.

I strongly believe that what happened here reflects the fact that people of color have to be 10 times as good just to get to the same place as a white person. It also reflects the real existence of white privilege. I do not for one minute believe that if Rebecca were a woman of color and had made the same mistakes that she made in the final task that Trump would be offering her the Apprenticeship alongside Randal. And judging from many of the posts I've read about this, many people of color, who have lived through this type of experience, agree with me.

I do not know what Donald Trump's intent was or what prompted him to do what he did. But it was irresponsible and just did more to further the racial animosity that exists in our society. He clearly felt Randal was the best--he should have left it at that.

There was a post that I'd like to share that clearly encapsulated how I believe many people of color feel about this issue:

"If you have never walked in a black man's shoes NEVER talk to us about using the "Race Card". It still is difficult being black in this country and Randall should have been left with the spotlight. I do not think it should be shame on Randall it should be shame on Trump for even putting him in that position. Each apprentice works hard for that one coveted position and I do not expect that to be asked of anyone who wins. And surprise it wasn’t asked of anyone until Randall. In the past I felt the last two candidates were even more equally matched. Closer than a Rhodes Scholar that is part owner of a multi million dollar company and several degrees and a 23 year old journalist with very good accomplishments but none that come close to matching Randall. Not use the race card? We as blacks in this country know that you have to be at least 10 times better to get the same position as a white person. Hence, Rhodes Scholar, 5 degrees including one from Oxford and one from MIT and thus being asked to share the spotlight with 2 degrees from the University of Chicago. Both impressive but be real one truly outshines the other. It was and will always be an insult that Trump even asked Randall that question. That should have never been in the first place. See it without color. Try being black for a day you would be shocked by what you perceive and what is reality in our world! No racism is NOT over and do not say so unless you have been black for at least a day. It’s a totally different world for us. "

A Surprise in My Mailbox

Although I LOVE the work I do, it has its challenges. There are people who just don't believe this training is necessary. They feel that we should all see ourselves as the same, as if that will fix all of society's woes, as if pretending that we're all treated equitably and and if we hold hands and sing "Kumbaya" everything will be okay. (It's called "minimization".) There are those who see "multiculturalism" as an evil word, and see those of us who teach multiculturalism as the devil reincarnated.

So these people sit in class and act out. They are passive-aggressive. When we ask what their expectations are for the day, they say they expect that they are not going to have to go through this training every year. Some read the newspaper through the entire training. They challenge everything we say. One student of mine in a college class I teach even filed a formal complaint against me and threatened legal action against the college.

So when my faith is tested, I will turn to the card I received in the mail today from Dr. Cap Peck, the Director of Teacher Education at the University of Washington. It was addressed to him from Robin, one of my former students in my "Multiculturalism and Anti-Bias in Early Childhood Education" class at Green River Community College. The Masters in Teaching program requires that all incoming students take a class that fulfills an "Education of an Ethnic Group" requirement. Because she had taught English as a Second Language in Japan, she had petitioned to have the requirement waived; however, her petition for a waiver was denied. So she wound up taking my class. In her card she writes to Dr. Peck, "I'm writing now to thank you as it turned out to be one of the best courses I've taken in my college career...You are probably not able to advocate for one teacher, or one class over another, but I hope the TEP people will continue suggesting this class--taught by Meg Tapucol-Provo--as one way of fulfilling the requirement--I think everyone in the class came away with a greater awareness of their own personal biases (however uncomfortable that may be) and an awareness of our cultural biases. A truly great class. I feel as though I see the world through a different lens now."

That was just a small excerpt of what she said, but suffice it to say, it makes this work really worth it to know that I've affected people in that way. I was so fortunate to have a summer quarter in which everyone was so open-minded and willing to view things from perspectives other than their own. Thanks Robin, you were a great student, and I know you'll be a great teacher someday too.

A Surprising Response to the Dr. Phil Show

On Thursday, September 22nd, the Dr. Phil Show focused on the theme of racism. I was pleased, because rarely do you see this topic addressed in the mainstream media. He interviewed a racist white man whose daughter was pregnant and expecting a biracial child. He spoke with an African-American man who was accused of acting "too white". And he interviewed an African-American woman whose daughter has been missing since 1999, and discussed at length the "pretty white girl" syndrome, in which young, attractive, middle-class white girls who go missing are covered at length in the media while there is no coverage of young women of color (think Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy, Natalie Holloway).

I felt this was an excellent show that tackled a sensitive topic with candor. I'm glad that finally someone talked about the things that our society is so loathe to talk about. I wanted to post something on the Dr. Phil discussion board, but when I went there, I was shocked to see numerous posts of this ilk:

NO I AM NOT A RACIST

I TRUELY BELIEVE BLACKS ARE RACIST TRUELY. I HAVE NEVER SEEN SO MANY BLACKS ATTACK WHITES .WHITES LOST EVERYTHING THEY HAD AND THEY DIED IN THE HURRICANE AS WELL AS BLACKS. DO BLACKS NOT REALIZE WHITES SUFFER TO. ALOT OF WHITES ARE AS POOR AND IN NEED AS THEY ARE. AND TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH BLACKS GET ALOT MORE BENIFITS FROM THE GOVERMENT AND STATES THEN POOR WHITES. I WOULD LOVE FOR DR. PHIL TO TALK ABOUT POOR WHITES AND SHOW THAT WHITES SUFFER TO. IT IS NOT FAIR TO SHOW ONLY BLACKS WHO ARE POOR . SHOW THE WHITES TO.GRANDMAFUZ

This is but one example. Each post that echoed this sentiment would start off with "I'm not a racist, but..." Frankly, these people just don't get it. It was as if the entire message the show was trying to convey went in one ear and out the other. But what's scary is that I wonder how many people truly feel that way. I can sit here and think to myself, well she's just an uneducated person who can't even spell, what does she know? But I'm not that naive that I don't know that there are a LOT of educated people who also think these thoughts--and they just put a more politically correct, educated spin on it. It's scary to me to think, am I in the minority in my way of thinking? Do most people in the United States share the same sentiments as Grandmafuz? Am I out of touch because I surround myself with those who think like me?

Then there were the posts (written much more articulately, I must say, and not in all caps) which were in response to these ridiculous diatribes. Many of them would call them on the carpet and basically tell them that by virtue of the fact that they wrote what they wrote, they were racist.

I was at a party a couple of weeks ago and an acquaintance who I hadn't seen in a while asked me what I'd been up to. I told him I was still doing cultural competency training. He responded, "We're still doing that shit?" At first I was taken aback by his response, but I think he meant that here it is 2005 and we still need training on how to get along with people who are different than us.

Judging from the posts on Dr. Phil's discussion board, we have a long, long way to go.

The Different Faces of Racism

I was watching an interview of former President Bill Clinton this morning on The Today Show. He was asked by Matt Lauer whether he felt the response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans would have been different if the people in the Convention Center had been middle-class and white as opposed to poor and African-American. I thought his answer was excellent--I have always felt that he has a much better understanding of racial issues than the people in the current administration, who try to dismiss any connection to race. What he said was that although he did not feel that there was any conscious racism in terms of how the government responded, he did feel that in terms of being prepared, the people in charge really were not attuned to the needs of those who were disenfranchised, and that in any disaster preparedness plan, you need to take into account things like, "How are people going to get out of the city if they don't have transportation?" What he was talking about, in essence, was institutionalized racism. What we saw, in living color, were the effects of institutionalized racism.

Barack Obama characterizes the federal response to Katrina as a "continuation of passive indifference," stating that it reflects the unthinking assumption that all Americans have "the capacity to load up their family in an SUV, fill it up with $100 worth of gasoline, stick some bottled water in the trunk and use a credit card to check into a hotel on safe ground."

However, every day, I receive something in my email inbox of acts of individual racism that happened in New Orleans as well. Blatant, out and out, in your face racism. Here is yet another story from someone who survived, a lawyer named Peter Berkowitz who happened to be in New Orleans when the hurricane hit.

http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/3405/

And this week's issue of Newsweek reported this disturbing scene:

"Over the course of two days, a white river-taxi operator from hard-hit St. Bernard Parish rescued scores of people from flooded areas and ferried them to safety. All were white. 'A n--ger is a n--ger is a n--ger.' he told a Newseek reporter. Then he said it again."

Yet people are still saying race isn't an issue.

Although I didn't watch Bush's entire speech last night, apparently he did acknowledge that what happened in New Orleans exposed some ugly truths about the racial and class divide that is rooted in racial discrimination in this country. Now that he's acknowledged it, let's see what he's planning to do about it. I'm also curious to see what the right-wing pundits, who throughout the past couple weeks have insisted that race has nothing to do with it, are going to say now.

10 Great Ways You Can Help

I just received an email with a link to this site and thought I'd pass this on--great information about alternative ways of helping hurricane survivors...

http://www.alternet.org/story/25177

Survivors' Stories

It seems that the mainstream media is misrepresenting what really happened in New Orleans. NPR interviewed several Hurricane Katrina survivors--a woman who was at the convention center, two people who tell how armed police in Gretna actually prevented them from leaving New Orleans in the height of the crisis, and a teenager who talks about what it is like to go without water for two days.

http://www.thislife.org/ The story is titled "After the Flood".

In addition, here is the written first-person account of two paramedics, Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky, attending a convention in New Orleans who were trapped by Hurricane Katrina. These are the two people who were interviewed in "After the Flood" who were prevented from leaving New Orleans.

*************************************************

Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreen's store at the corner of Royal and Iberville streets remained locked. The dairy display case was clearly visible through the widows. It was now 48 hours without electricity, running water, plumbing. The milk, yogurt, and cheeses were beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners and managers had locked up the food, water, pampers, and prescriptions and fled the City. Outside Walgreen's windows, residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and hungry.

The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized and the windows at Walgreen's gave way to the looters. There was an alternative. The cops could have broken one small window and distributed the nuts, fruit juices, and bottle water in an organized and systematic manner. But they did not. Instead they spent hours playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away the looters.
We were finally airlifted out of New Orleans two days ago and arrived home yesterday (Saturday). We have yet to see any of the TV coverage or look at a newspaper. We are willing to guess that there were no video images or front-page pictures of European or affluent white tourists looting the Walgreen's in the French Quarter.

We also suspect the media will have been inundated with "hero" images of the National Guard, the troops and the police struggling to help the "victims" of the Hurricane. What you will not see, but what we witnessed, were the real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief effort: the working class of New Orleans. The maintenance workers who used a fork lift to carry the sick and disabled. The engineers, who rigged, nurtured and kept the generators running. The electricians who improvised thick extension cords stretching over blocks to share the little electricity we had in order to free cars stuck on rooftop parking lots. Nurses who took over for mechanical ventilators and spent many hours on end manually forcing air into the lungs of unconscious patients to keep them alive. Doormen who rescued folks stuck in elevators.

Refinery workers who broke into boat yards, "stealing" boats to rescue their neighbors clinging to their roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hot-wire any car that could be found to ferry people out of the City. And the food service workers who scoured the commercial kitchens improvising communal meals for hundreds of those stranded. Most of these workers had lost their homes, and had not heard from members of their families, yet they stayed and provided the only infrastructure for the 20% of New Orleans that was not under water.

On Day 2, there were approximately 500 of us left in the hotels in the French Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference attendees like ourselves, and locals who had checked into hotels for safety and shelter from Katrina. Some of us had cell phone contact with family and friends outside of New Orleans. We were repeatedly told that all sorts of resources including the National Guard and scores of buses were pouring in to the City. The buses and the other resources must have been invisible because none of us had seen them.

We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and came up with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the City. Those who did not have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket were subsidized by those who did have extra money. We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spending the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing the limited water, food, and clothes we had. We created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and new born babies. We waited late into the night for the "imminent" arrival of the buses. The buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute they arrived at the City limits, they were commandeered by the military.

By day 4 our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was dangerously abysmal. As the desperation and despair increased, street crime as well as water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out and locked their doors, telling us that the "officials" told us to report to the convention center to wait for more buses. As we entered the center of the City, we finally encountered the National Guard. The Guards told us we would not be allowed into the Superdome as the City's primary shelter had descended into a humanitarian and health hellhole. The guards further told us that the City's only other shelter, the Convention Center, was also descending into chaos and squalor and that the police were not allowing anyone else in. Quite naturally, we asked, "If we can't go to the only 2 shelters in the City, what was our alternative?" The guards told us that that was our problem, and no they did not have extra water to give to us. This would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and hostile "law enforcement".

We walked to the police command center at Harrah's on Canal Street and were told the same thing, that we were on our own, and no they did not have water to give us. We now numbered several hundred. We held a mass meeting to decide a course of action. We agreed to camp outside the police command post. We would be plainly visible to the media and would constitute a highly visible embarrassment to the City officials. The police told us that we could not stay. Regardless, we began to settle in and set up camp. In short order, the police commander came across the street to address our group. He told us he had a solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge where the police had buses lined up to take us out of the City. The crowd cheered and began to move. We called everyone back and explained to the commander that there had been lots of misinformation and wrong information and was he sure that there were buses waiting for us. The commander turned to the crowd and stated emphatically, "I swear to you that the buses are there."

We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with great excitement and hope. As we marched past the convention center, many locals saw our determined and optimistic group and asked where we were headed. We told them about the great news. Families immediately grabbed their few belongings and quickly our numbers doubled and then doubled again. Babies in strollers now joined us, people using crutches, elderly clasping walkers and others people in wheelchairs. We marched the 2-3 miles to the freeway and up the steep incline to the Bridge. It now began to pour down rain, but it did not dampen our enthusiasm.

As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.

We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.

Our small group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek shelter from the rain under an overpass. We debated our options and in the end decided to build an encampment in the middle of the Ponchartrain Expressway on the center divide, between the O'Keefe and Tchoupitoulas exits. We reasoned we would be visible to everyone, we would have some security being on an elevated freeway and we could wait and watch for the arrival of the yet to be seen buses.

All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be turned away. Some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others to be verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the City on foot.

Meanwhile, the only two City shelters sank further into squalor and disrepair. The only way across the bridge was by vehicle. We saw workers stealing trucks, buses, moving vans, semi-trucks and any car that could be hotwired. All were packed with people trying to escape the misery New Orleans had become.

Our little encampment began to blossom. Someone stole a water delivery truck and brought it up to us. Let's hear it for looting! A mile or so down the freeway, an army truck lost a couple of pallets of C-rations on a tight turn. We ferried the food back to our camp in shopping carts. Now secure with the two necessities, food and water; cooperation, community, and creativity flowered. We organized a clean up and hung garbage bags from the rebar poles. We made beds from wood pallets and cardboard. We designated a storm drain as the bathroom and the kids built an elaborate enclosure for privacy out of plastic, broken umbrellas, and other scraps. We even organized a food recycling system where individuals could swap out parts of C-rations (applesauce for babies and candies for kids!).

This was a process we saw repeatedly in the aftermath of Katrina. When individuals had to fight to find food or water, it meant looking out for yourself only. You had to do whatever it took to find water for your kids or food for your parents. When these basic needs were met, people began to look out for each other, working together and constructing a community.

If the relief organizations had saturated the City with food and water in the first 2 or 3 days, the desperation, the frustration and the ugliness would not have set in. Flush with the necessities, we offered food and water to passing families and individuals. Many decided to stay and join us. Our encampment grew to 80 or 90 people. >From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned that the media was talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news organizations saw us on their way into the City. Officials were being asked what they were going to do about all those families living up on the freeway? The officials responded they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. "Taking care of us" had an ominous tone to it.

Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was correct. Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming, "Get off the fucking freeway". A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water. Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated or congealed into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of "victims" they saw "mob" or "riot". We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay together" was impossible because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.

In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we scattered once again. Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.
The next days, our group of 8 walked most of the day, made contact with New Orleans Fire Department and were eventually airlifted out by an urban search and rescue team. We were dropped off near the airport and managed to catch a ride with the National Guard. The two young guardsmen apologized for the limited response of the Louisiana guards. They explained that a large section of their unit was in Iraq and that meant they were shorthanded and were unable to complete all the tasks they were assigned.

We arrived at the airport on the day a massive airlift had begun. The airport had become another Superdome. We 8 were caught in a press of humanity as flights were delayed for several hours while George Bush landed briefly at the airport for a photo op. After being evacuated on a coast guard cargo plane, we arrived in San Antonio, Texas.

There the humiliation and dehumanization of the official relief effort continued. We were placed on buses and driven to a large field where we were forced to sit for hours and hours. Some of the buses did not have air-conditioners. In the dark, hundreds if us were forced to share two filthy overflowing porta-potties. Those who managed to make it out with any possessions (often a few belongings in tattered plastic bags) we were subjected to two different dog-sniffing searches.

Most of us had not eaten all day because our C-rations had been confiscated at the airport because the rations set off the metal detectors. Yet, no food had been provided to the men, women, children, elderly, disabled as they sat for hours waiting to be "medically screened" to make sure we were not carrying any communicable diseases.

This official treatment was in sharp contrast to the warm, heart-felt reception given to us by the ordinary Texans. We saw one airline worker give her shoes to someone who was barefoot. Strangers on the street offered us money and toiletries with words of welcome. Throughout, the official relief effort was callous, inept, and racist. There was more suffering than need be. Lives were lost that did not need to be lost.

Who Are the Real Criminals?

Yesterday my husband told me of yet another comment he heard at his workplace that all the looters should be shot, regardless of whether they were stealing TV sets or taking food and water for survival. My husband spoke out vehemently against this hateful rhetoric and has vowed that he will not sit by silently while people spew forth venom such as this. Something I talk about in the class I teach, "Multiculturalism and Anti-Bias in Education" at Green River Community College, is that if we are not part of the solution then we are part of the problem. If we do not speak up when people make racist or otherwise bigoted or prejudicial remarks, or engage in racist or bigoted behavior, then they perceive us to be in tacit agreement with them. And nothing changes.

But that isn't what I want to talk about today. It has just been revealed that Michael Brown, the blithering idiot that heads up FEMA, padded his resume. According to the latest Time Magazine investigative report, Brown had no management training. In addition, other top FEMA officials had no background other than public relations. All of their political appointments were based on personal friendships.

Brown's White House biography stated that he was the Assistant City Manager of Edmond, Oklahoma from 1975 to 1978 with oversight of the Emergency Services Division. However, when Time Magazine interviewed officials of Edmond, they discovered that Brown was actually Assistant to the City Manager, an administrative position that is on par with an intern.

So we have someone completely incompetent as our HURRICANE CZAR?????? And others equally as incompetent in top positions at FEMA????? What is the larger crime here? Stealing TVs and food and water? Or lying on your resume to get a job where millions of lives are at stake, and who knows how many lives were lost because of your lack of experience and utter incompetence? And the cronyism that exists at the highest levels of government that allowed that lack of experience to be overlooked in favor of personal friendships?

Unbelievable.

The Myth of Meritocracy

When I read about Michael Brown, the inept head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) who has completely botched the federal disaster management response to Hurricane Katrina, and that his prior experience was running something called the International Arabian Horse Association, and that his appointment was based on a personal connection, I cannot help thinking about how this scenario is played out over and over again in our society.

I teach a class entitled "Multiculturalism and Anti-Bias in Education" at Green River Community College. During our final class meeting of the summer quarter, we had a lively discussion about affirmative action. One of my students was firmly opposed to affirmative action, saying she felt that people of color who were less qualified were getting into colleges and getting jobs over more qualified white people. (Never mind that there was not one person of color in my entire class, except for me.) So I posed the question, "Isn't it a form of affirmative action when a white male whose father is an alumnus of an Ivy League school, automatically is accepted into the school, even if his grades are marginal? Isn't that a form of preferential treatment? Why aren't people clamoring to get rid of that?"


According to Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Brown "admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center." Yet instead of taking him to task, Bush hailed him in Mobile, Alabama on Friday by saying, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." So not only does he get the job because of preferential treatment, when he screws up, he gets a pat on the back.

Peggy McIntosh of Wellesley College wrote an excellent article about white privilege entitled "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack", that many of us in the field of intercultural communications use in our work. Here is the link:

http://seamonkey.ed.asu.edu/~mcisaac/emc598ge/Unpacking.html

It is because of white privilege that many whites and people of color view the political fallout of Hurricane Katrina through very different lenses. According to McIntosh,

"The silences and denials surrounding privilege are the key political tool here. They keep the thinking about equality or equity incomplete, protecting unearned advantage and conferred dominance by making these subjects taboo."

Many whites will say that race was not an issue, whereas people of color will say that race was absolutely an issue.

White privilege is what got Michael Brown his job. If Michael Brown had been an African-American heading up the International Arabian Horse Association, with no prior experience with emergency management, he would never have had the connections, or been part of the good old boy network to get the job heading up FEMA. The appointment of Michael Brown goes to show that meritocracy is a myth. Society teaches us that if we work hard, we will get what we want, but white privilege puts certain people at an advantage while putting others at a disadvantage. As McIntosh writes,

"...obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already."

Wise Words from Leonard Pitts, Jr.

Two nights ago, my husband shared something with me that had happened earlier that morning. A business acquaintance of his was talking about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and started spouting hateful invectives--"Those n____rs deserved it! They were looting and out of control!" On and on and on. Because I'd met this person before and had detected racist attitudes in him, I was not completely surprised, although both my husband and I wondered out loud how the seeds of such venom and hate had been planted in this man's mind.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., my favorite editorial columnist from the Miami Herald, wrote a great column today entitled "Don't Use Katrina to Justify Your Hate" that addresses this issue. In it he writes, "It's as tiresome as it is predictable. American disunion being what it is these days, some of us look at even a natural disaster through the distorting prism of bigotry, rancor and fear."

I'd like to share the article with you because I think he has some important things to say:

Don't use Katrina to justify your hate
Leonard Pitts, Jr.

Does it really matter?

The city is flooded, people are homeless and hungry and scared and dead. Shouldn't this be a time for giving money and saying prayers? Should we really care about the color of the people looting in the hurricane zone? Or that Louisiana is a red state? Or that some of the dead are gay?

Apparently, that kind of thing matters to some of us.

It matters, for instance, to a black man who posted a note in an online forum saying he is embarrassed by news footage showing that most of the looters are black.

It matters to the white people who've sent me notes daring me to explain why blacks are "running amok."

It matters to the author of a note circulating on the Internet who says it would be a "problem" for a liberal in a blue state to send relief money to a red state.

And it matters to a group called Repent America, which has issued a statement saying the storm was God's way of canceling a gay festival that was to have taken place in New Orleans this week.

It's as tiresome as it is predictable. American disunion being what it is these days, some of us look at even a natural disaster through the distorting prism of bigotry, rancor and fear.

Let me say a few things here. The first is that the city of New Orleans is, according to the last census, 67.3 percent black. Given that looting is predictable under any significant breakdown of social order, whom would you expect to find out there smashing windows when the lights go out? Ethnic Hawaiians?

Besides which, white folks loot, too. Only it's not called looting when they do it. I refer you to a widely circulated news photo of a white couple wading through chest-high water after, in the words of the caption, "finding" food. As if that loaf of bread the woman has were just lying by the side of the road.

I'm sorry, but I have little patience for black people who find shame in this looting. Less patience for white ones who find vindication of their bigotry. It makes me angry that some people think these are the conversations we should be having now.

Our countrymen are in dire straits. We are talking in large part about those who had no means of escape, no cars or credit cards, no way to book a flight, reserve a room, buy a bus ticket, hop a train, no choice but to sit there and wait for disaster to come.

They are, by and large, the poorest and most meager among us and they are living through hell right now. Death toll rising like floodwaters, probably heading into the thousands, corpses floating down the street, and some liberal twit is joking — God, I hope he was joking — that the blue states should let the red one suffer? People clinging to roof tops, a great city turned into a steaming, stinking primordial swamp, and some alleged Christians think it's a victory for heterosexuality?

Memo to all these nitwits: It was a hurricane, not God's stamp of approval for your small-mindedness and hate.

Tragedy often becomes a stage for the best of human character. But it seems as if this tragedy is also destined to be a stage for the worst, a spotlight on the divisions that have lately grown so much wider between us.

And then there is the TV reporter who met a distraught man in the aftermath of the storm. He told her how his house had broken in two. How he tried to hold onto his wife as the storm and the water raged. How she told him, "You can't hold me" and asked him to take care of the kids and the grandkids. How he lost his grip and she was swept away.

The man was crying as he told the story and it seemed as if the reporter was weeping, too. For the record, he was black and she was white and I wouldn't be surprised if there were also other differences between them. But in that moment, they were just two human beings met at an intersection of inconsolable loss.

There are times when nothing else matters.

Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr.'s column appears Sunday on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is: lpitts@herald.com

A National Disgrace

As I watch the heartbreaking images of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I am extremely disturbed at what I see. If people want a rude awakening about the state of the racial divide in our country, just turn on the television. There are those who will say that there is not a racial issue anymore in this country, and it's all about class. However, one cannot deny the fact that race and class are inextricably intertwined. Look at the people in New Orleans, stuck in the Convention Center without food and water. 99% of them are poor and African-American. These are the people who have no way to get out of the city, no car and no money. As I watched the Dateline Special last night, the racial divide was glaring. White people with cars were fleeing New Orleans, sitting in long gas lines, trying to find a motel. Other white people holed up on a rooftop of a vacant apartment building, afraid of the violence on the streets. And tens of thousands of African-American people (with a smattering of a few white faces) in the New Orleans Convention Center, with no food, no water, surrounded by the dead and the dying, forgotten by the powers that be. Is this really America? Sadly, yes.

Martin Espada, an English professor at the University of Massachusetts says, "We tend to think of natural disasters as somehow even-handed, as somehow random. Yet it has always been thus: poor people are in danger. That is what it means to be poor. It's dangerous to be poor. It's dangerous to be black. It's dangerous to be Latino."

And Charles Steele Jr., the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta had this to say: "Everything is God's will. But there's a certain amount of common sense that God gives to individuals to prepare for certain things. Most of the people that live in the neighborhoods that were most vulnerable are black and poor. So it comes down to a lack of sensitivity on the part of people in Washington that you need to help poor folks. It's as simple as that."

Patti Digh, a colleague of mine at Executive Diversity Services, wrote a moving piece about just this issue on her weblog, 37 Days. In it she talks about the intersection of race and class, how white privilege and socioeconomic privilege make people oblivious to the fault lines that divide people, and how Hurricane Katrina is bringing it all to the forefront. Here's the piece:

http://37days.typepad.com/37days/2005/09/replace_they_wi.html

As Patti writes in her piece, if the people in the Convention Center were wealthy and influential, would they be sitting there for five days dying in the sun, waiting for food and water? Of course not. But the people there now are those in the margins. They are not looked at as individuals, but as a mob. Without resources and without connections. Forgotten. The response to the tsunami victims in Asia was quicker than the response to our own citizens. It's unconscionable and an unspeakable tragedy.