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Talk:Racial discrepancy of Hurricane Katrina damage

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Admittedly my article is not NPOV, since I wrote it and have a POV, so I welcome someone with an opposing POV to balance it out.

I believe that the you used discrepancy incorrectly. (discrepancy - something factualy wrong) I think you meant to say "disparity". --mitrebox 19:20, 6 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Unsourced materials[edit]

Transfering unsourced materials to talk page:

  • "...whilst some advocate racial discrimination, others have highlighted the Race and Intelligence theory, where blacks are shown to be intellectually inferior"
  • " ... and many have speculated that he was not so concerned about the plight of poor African-Americans"
  • " ... these are crimes typically associated with the black population."

Please provide specific examples of the sources of these opinions. --Vsion 00:47, 5 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Race vs Class[edit]

I would argue that the common factor of the victims who were unable to evacuate is that they are poor, not that they are black.

The facts that a majority of the NOLA inner city citzens are black, whites tend to live in subburbs, or that nationwide a higher proportion of blacks are in poverty is much more of an issue between race and class than between the failure of the evacuation and race.

In order to qualify a disparity based on race one would have to show (with census numbers):

  • Whites often have family in other areas of the country to goto during evacuations
  • Whites tend not to live in multigenation households (ie grandparents)
  • Blacks tend to live in multigeneration households (making it more difficult to evacuate)
  • Blacks tend to live in the same cities as other family members (and therefore have no other place to go during an evacuation)

Even if you could prove these things it more shows that the disparity is not due to race but to culture.--mitrebox 19:39, 6 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Questionable phrasing[edit]

"It has also been noted that poor people had less means to evacuate by car and Africans Americans tend to be poorer than whites, because blacks are an intellectually inferior race (see Race and Intelligence"

I strongly object to the following sentence. African-Americans are no way inferior or less intelligent because of their race. If this is meant to be presented as an alternate theory, then this is phrased terribly. A better way to present that theory (although I must say I strongly disagree with it), would be as follows:

"It has also been noted that poor people had less means to evacuate by car and African-Americans tend to be poorer than whites. One theory states that African-Americans are victims of racial discrimination. Another theory states that they are inferior due to the color of their skin. (see Race and Intelligence)"

Of course all the appropriate links would be inserted, I'm just being lazy considering this is a discussion page. If no one has any objections to me editing the article, I would like to edit it after 24 hours have passed.

~~ Unregistered Member 4:20 AM GMT, Thurdsay 10:20 PM CST, Wednesday

I don't think that a hurricane cares what race you are[edit]

any thoughts?--Wikiwarrior 03:27, 8 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that a hurricane doesn't care what race you are when it hits. However, the point of this article is to show that African Americans were hit worse than whites relative to the city's population. This article offers some comments as to why such a disparity occured. ~~ Unregistered Member (I'm the same one as above).