Chocolate Death Toll?

ontheroof
Originally uploaded by Gna42.

I am posting the following statistics in response to former President Carter's remarks made at Coretta Scott King's funeral.

Quote Jimmy Carter: "We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, those who were most devastated by Katrina, to know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans."

Are there not yet equal opportunities for 79 year old White folks like my parents, who lost EVERYTHING? Is that what former President Carter meant? We all know what he meant, and I for one resent his classless and race-baiting comments.

Read the following statistics from Storms 411:Katrina which you can reference at
http://outhouserag.typepad.com/hurricane_watch/katrina_aftermath_death_toll/

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The popular perception that African-Americans living in New Orleans were disproportionately victimized by the government's botched Hurricane Katrina rescue effort turns out not to be true - at least according to preliminary death statistics released by the state of Louisiana.

On Wednesday, Congress heard dramatic testimony from black Katrina survivors, who complained that racism drove the federal rescue efforts and resulted in an unnecessarily high number of African-American deaths.

"People were allowed to die," storm survivor Leah Hodges testified, telling a House panel that black residents of New Orleans had been victims of "genocide and ethnic cleansing."

But preliminary figures compiled by the morgue in St. Gabriel, Louisiana, which is the primary facility handling the bodies of Katrina deceased, show that a majority of the dead in New Orleans and surrounding parishes were actually not black.

Of the 883 bodies processed so far by medical examiners at St. Gabriel, 562 have been identified by race. Slightly less than half that number - 48 percent - are African-American. Forty-one percent are white, 8 percent unknown and 2 percent Hispanic.

The remarkable numbers, which undermine claims that Katrina rescue efforts were somehow infused by racism, have been completely ignored by the national media, with only the Lousiana-based news web site, The Bayou Buzz, devoting any coverage at all to the story.

The surprisingly low death rate for black Katrina victims comes despite the fact that New Orleans itself was more than two-thirds black [67 percent] when the storm hit. White residents made up less than a third [28 percent] of the city's population, according to U.S. Census bureau numbers.

The two hardest hit areas were Orleans parish, which is the city itself - with 720 people killed by Katrina - and St. Bernard parish, with 123 dead.

St. Bernard parish is 88 percent white, but the total population before the storm was just 65,554 people. The city of New Orleans, on the other hand, had 484,674 people before the storm, 67 percent of whom were black.

The two populations combined were still over 60 percent black - twelve points higher than the percentage of black residents killed by Katrina.

So more whites died per capita than blacks. So you had elderly white people who chose to ride out the storm at home vs the hell that awaited them in the dome. Many of them died. The black population that could not evacuate went to the dome.. And while they were uncomfortable, they lived.

December 13, 2005
Katrina - Aftermath - Death Toll


State

Louisiana Official
state
total 1,035


County/Parish
deaths

Ascension 9
Assumption 3
Caddo 11
East Baton Rouge 72
Iberia 6
Jefferson 30
Lafourche 2
Livingston 5
Orleans 154
Plaquemines 3
St. Bernard 125
St. Charles 8
St. Landry 1
St. Tammany 7
Tangipahoa 26
Terrebonne 19
West Baton Rouge 3

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So... CNN, Time Magazine, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, et all aside, we see that, lo and behold, a STORM does not play racial favorites. Katrina hit everyone, White, Black, Hispanic, rich, middle-class, and poor with equal force and devastation. I know. My parents still have no home and my sister will be out of her FEMA-financed hotel ASAP.

Despite the idiocy of New Orleans Mayor Ray "Willie" Nagin (or "School Bus Nagin," if you prefer) what New Orleans needs most is not Chocolate residents but Green residents, as in green from the lettuce-moola-greenbacks in their pockets. Does Nagin really think his plea for Chocolate voters to return and support him and his party isn't transparent?

When I went shopping at The French Market I noticed the vendors were predominently Asian, and the workers rebuilding the city mainly Mexican. My Point? Ray Nagin should drop to his knees and pray for ANYONE of ANY RACE who has money to come and spend it in his city! Nagin may not care what the well-to-do Uptown residents (Read White) think, but New Orleanians should.


The last thing New Orleans residents need as they rebuild their lives are people in positions of prominence racially dividing the city for purely political reasons. My Dad, God bless him, voted for these two clowns and I wonder if he regrets it now... or when he was waterless at the Convention Center. This is a time for tough love, New Orleans. Vote accordingly!

-Earl


P.S.- My Sister lived Uptown and Ditto to Blanco's shenanigins.