Last Friday, as I watched CNN, a reporter referred viewers to a blog entitled "The Daily Dish" (www.andrewsullivan.com), which had links to photos of the interior of a local Winn Dixie. Apparently, New Orleans residents had cleaned the grocery of food and the pharmacy of much of its medicine during the hurricane.
While the photos provided evidence of the survival tactics of the Katrina victims, I continued watching, perplexed, in an attempt to identify the truly newsworthy element. Hadn't major news outlets broken the story of "looting" more than a week ago? Yet the reporter, a white woman, continued to encourage viewers to log on to view more pictures of the "looting."
By highlighting the act of "looting," this news report isolated the act from the struggle to survive, a situation in which many Katrina victims found themselves in the days following the hurricane. Other news reports have taken the same myopic approach of identifying one act of survival, "looting," and not providing ample context to justify that action.At a community meeting in Houston, my mother, a nurse, who drove to the Houston Astrodome from New York to help, said that one young 15-year-old evacuee from New Orleans spoke of how he had to do what was necessary to provide what was needed for his family. During the hurricane, his grandmother pointed at his chest and said, "Now you're the man of the house. You gotta help us survive."
The national hysteria and anxiety over the "looting" seems displaced and not cognizant of the desperate situation in which New Orleans residents found themselves: waiting for days for adequate food, water and shelter. In the same situation, what exactly would you do?
Major news outlets also disseminated stories of widespread violence, including one of a child being raped, babies being killed and bodies piling up on the floor of the New Orleans Superdome. As of last Tuesday, The Guardian reported that New Orleans police had been unable to confirm any such reports of violence in the Superdome. The preponderance of stories of violence and "looting" attributed to the predominantly black New Orleans residents makes me question not just the journalistic integrity of our major news outlets but the racial consciousness of a nation that would allow such falsity to be projected by the news media.
Both the persistence of the media in covering the "looting" and the difference in the language used to describe the "looters" perpetuate a criminalistic image of the black survivors of Katrina. The now-famous photographs issued by separate press agencies of a white person "finding" food and of a black person "looting" food attest to the inextricable and subconscious way racism manifests itself in the media. The language used to describe the black and white looters/finders provides evidence of the racist bed in which many Americans in the United States comfortably lie.
Given the racial and class realities of New Orleans, with more than 70 percent of the population black and 23 percent living in poverty, the manner and tone in which the media continues to perceive and portray New Orleans Katrina survivors hardly comes as a surprise. Indeed, last Tuesday, The New York Times reported that Barbara Bush declared the response to Hurricane Katrina, criticized by many as seriously flawed, a success for evacuees who "were underprivileged anyway." The constant and repetitive images of "looting" and the rumors of murderers and rapists running rampant are consistent with this nation's historical pattern of viewing blacks as "shiftless, lazy, thievin', triflin' asses." This stereotype surfaces continuously in sitcoms, soaps, reality shows, movies and other media.
As major news outlets daily furnish the national narrative with memories of this disaster of historic proportions, it is more than shameful that the media perpetuates, unconsciously perhaps, common racist stereotypes of blacks. Instead of stories and images depicting the remarkable restraint and incredible grace of the overwhelming majority of the survivors, major news outlets have taken to looting the national narrative of truth. In so doing, they have directly contributed to the entire festering swamp of stigmatization and racist language surrounding the survivors of Hurricane Katrina.
Tyehemba can be reached at nntyehemba@amherst.edu