#posted my grievances and dipped today after handing over the last of my work as a lore officer

[candlewitches]

cannot sleep mostly because of pain but also bc i am still full of rage at the former (and now current again LMAO) execs of my former larp. like literally. “i can excuse (alleged) mismanagement, fraud, and embezzlement, but i draw the line at a sternly worded announcement”

[sociologyquotes]

Where Black Lives Matter Began

from the article Where Black Lives Matter Began by Jamelle Bouie

“When we look at the first 15 years of the 21st century, the most defining moment in black America’s relationship to its country isn’t Election Day 2008; it’s Hurricane Katrina. The events of the storm and its aftermath sparked a profound shift among black Americans toward racial pessimism that persists to today, even with Barack Obama in the White House. Black collective memory of Hurricane Katrina, as much as anything else, informs the present movement against police violence, “Black Lives Matter.” 

Among the first images of New Orleans after the storm were shots of low-income black Americans, stranded and desperate to escape the floods and debris. In the narrow sense, they were there because the city’s evacuation plan—which didn’t account for massive traffic out of the region—fell apart. Rather than bring remaining New Orleansians out, officials sent them to the Superdome and the convention center, which were quickly overcrowded and undersupplied. In a much broader sense, however, they were there because in a city defined by decades of poverty, segregation, and deep disenfranchisement, poor and working-class blacks (including the elderly, and children) would largely shoulder the burden of the storm.

To black Americans around the country, this looked like neglect. In an ABC News and Washington Post poll taken shortly after the hurricane, 71 percent of blacks said that New Orleans would have been “better prepared” if it were a “wealthier city with more whites,” and 76 percent said the federal government would have “responded faster.” A Newsweek poll confirmed this sense among black Americans that the government responded slowly because most of the affected people were black.

[...]  One study—“Feeling the Pain of My People: Hurricane Katrina, Racial Inequality, and the Psyche of Black America”—tests the claim that blacks had a heightened and racialized response to Katrina. The authors conclude that “Despite geographic and socioeconomic differences, black Americans throughout the country … identified with Hurricane Katrina’s primarily African American victims.” More so than white Americans, they write, “blacks were deeply angered and depressed by the events surrounding the hurricane.”

[...]  Analyzing stories from the period, researchers found exaggerated claims of violence among Katrina victims, as well as grossly inaccurate reports of crime and disorder. In one infamous example of skewed coverage, an Associated Press photo shows a young black man wading through water that has risen to his chest. He’s holding a case of soda and pulling a bag. The caption says he had just been “looting a grocery store.” A second photo, this time from AFP/Getty Images, shows a white couple in the same situation. The caption says they are shown “after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store.” Even worse than this were comments from conservative commentators like Bill O’Reilly of Fox News, who denounced the “poor in New Orleans” as “drug addicted” and “thugs”—with the inescapable conclusion being that they deserved their fates.

It should be said that black alienation wasn’t inevitable. Even with the polls and the coverage, views may have changed if white Americans also perceived black treatment during and after the storm as unfair and racially biased. But that’s not what happened.

Instead, white Americans discounted claims of racial bias. According to the Pew Research Center, 77 percent of whites said the government response would have been the same if the victims had been white, and only 32 percent said the event showed that racial inequality was still a major problem (for blacks, 66 percent believed the response would have been faster had the victims been mainly white and 71 percent said it demonstrated racial inequality). Other polls confirmed these findings.

In addition to disbelief that Katrina was a racial story, research and polling also showed a white public that held survivors in contempt. In a 2006 study that examined white and black attitudes toward Katrina victims, political scientists Leonie Huddy and Stanley Feldman found that 65 percent of white respondents blamed residents and the mayor for being trapped in New Orleans. In a CNN/USA Today survey, half of all whites said that people who broke into stores and took things were “mostly criminals,” compared to 77 percent of blacks who said they were “mostly desperate people” trying to find a way to survive. (Pew had similar findings.) If you turned to right-wing media, you’d find unvarnished disdain for those left behind in the city. 

The idea that black Americans had a legitimate grievance was dismissed. The result was a collapse in black racial optimism. The year before Katrina, according to Gallup, 68 percent of blacks said race relations were either “somewhat good” or “very good.” The year after Katrina, that declined to 62 percent. The next year, it declined to 55 percent, the lowest point of the decade. In broader surveys from the Pew Research Center, the period after Katrina is an inflection point, where the percentage of blacks who say they are worse off finally overtakes the percentage who say their lives have improved. Black optimism stayed on a downward trajectory for the three years after Katrina. In another Gallup trend-line, black satisfaction with society dips from a steady 41 percent in 2005, to 37 percent in 2006, to 30 percent in 2007.

With the recession, there was every sign these trends would continue. But then, Barack Obama made his historic run for the White House, a tangible sign of racial progress.

[...]  If Barack Obama sparked such a significant shift in black opinion, isn’t his election the key point in black political consciousness and not Katrina? The answer is straightforward: No, because the euphoria didn’t last.

[...]  Since 2012, but especially since last year, a rapid and steady succession of high profile shootings has moved black opinion to its pre-Obama, post-Katrina state of pessimism. Between the incidents and the outcomes—where shooters escape with little punishment or sanction—blacks have become more pessimistic about their place in American life. From 2009 to 2013, notes a Pew survey taken on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, the percentage of blacks who felt a sense of progress dropped from 39 percent to 26 percent. As of this summer, reports the New York Times, just 28 percent of black Americans say race relations are generally good, which is in line with where they were in the months before Obama’s election.

The Obama surge in black optimism is over. Now, black Americans are back to their post-Katrina consensus; a deep sense that America is indifferent to their lives and livelihoods. Indeed, when read in that light, a movement like Black Lives Matter seems inevitable. The disaster of Hurricane Katrina, and its impact on the collective experience of black America, sowed the ground for a reckoning. Yes, Obama’s election postponed it for a time, but the recent eruption of black death—at the hands of the state—gave it new urgency. And now, as we can all see, it’s here.”