Comments on Was Katrina Too Black?

Yeah, and I just saw The Last King of Scotland too. There were like, maybe 3-4 white people in that whole movie - and all of the extras were black until the very end at the airport. What the hell?

Wow! Hearsay on the internet. Must be true. (And what's an "anectdote"?)

Well, that is in fact the most important question about the government's response to Katrina (not the film). Why IS it so black? Why do so many black people live without resources or the possibility of resources in the most vulnerable below-sea-level areas of New Orleans? New Orleans is not a normal city, although much of the government's response assumed that it was -- and much of the failure is attributable to (a) not understanding the special conditions of New Orleans, and (b) not really giving a shit. Which gets back to black people. Poor blacks living in New Orleans, in the view of the Bush Administration, would be best off if they all died or went away.

"Where all the white women at?"

I had to laugh out loud when I read this post.

That's not a completely groundless question--plenty of whites were made homeless by Hurricane Katrina--it didn't just hit New Orleans...Biloxi, for example, which is 70% white, and lost 90% of buildings along the coast; Katrina killed 53 people there.

There's nothing wrong with focusing on one community, whether that community is majority white or majority black or whatever...

But I can imagine that if the roles were reversed--if the filmmakers had chosen to focus on a majority white city instead of a majority black one--people might call racism about that, too.

Motion picture distributors don't care about black people.

Seth, you missed the fucking point. This film is not getting distributed not because they find it inaccurate and one-sided, but because white people like to see white faces on a screen. (Historically, the exceptions have been when the black faces are on white people or the black faces on black people have a grin and thems feets is shufflin'

I'm shocked, SHOCKED that someone would ask that question in Utah.

@ 7 - AMEN

I'm white and I lost everything in Katrina. I was ABLE to get out unlike most. The face of Katrina is black, but for every black there is probably a white (in the non-urban/rural areas) that was affected. I guess the difference was our ability (both vehicle-wise and monetarily) to leave. I certainly don't blame the "blacks," but understand whites were also affected.

Just so y'all know: It's a first-person doc primarily constructed from video shot by a survivor who stayed through the levee breach and flooding. It's not an objective overview designed to tell the stories of absolutely everyone who was affected.

@7:
More current historical references please!