Fat Charlie

Are there rich black people that are starving and stuck on roofs? How about rich hispanics? Middle class Latinos? How about moderately well off Mulatos?

The rich, regardless of color, tend to avoid suffering. They have the money to buy their way out of bad situations.

I understand the point you're trying too make, but using the phrase "rich white people" instead of "white people", betrays a prejeduce in and of its self.

It is a race thing.

Proportionally, the racial distribution of wealth is so skewed it's appauling. When you look at the distribution regionally, it's even more appauling. The fact that for the better part of the Country's history, the economy of the South East United States was rooted in the Black oppression is well known by "affluent liberal white people".

I understand the point that you're trying to make, but the people who you're trying to skewer don't get it at all.

Absolutely, Kyle. I don't think we disagree on what the problems are at all.

I also think, though, that money speaks louder than color. They are intertwined, yes, but I think if poor white people had been the majority at the Superdome and Convention center, the results may well have been the same.

The vast underclass has a disproportionate amount of people of color, but there are also many, many white people who fall beneath the poverty line. They don't have to contend with the racism of this country, but they are trapped in the cycle of poverty. And I think they would have been left to die in New Orleans, too. It is a race thing, but it is also a poverty thing as well.

The last thirty years have seen the largest gap in recent history emerge between the haves and the have nots, regardless of color. The differences between poor whites and poor blacks have been explotiated by politicans, eager to divide and conquer the lower classes. That is evident in the New Orleans crisis, where a white couple "finds" bags of food, according to a picture caption, while two black people "loot."

Tragically, I think whatever dialouge this opens up in our country about race and class will be swept under the rug as soon as a teenager goes missing in a tropical country.

And no one can argue this country was built on the sweat and blood of slaves. Many argue that the "prosperity" we maintain is still feasting on the dividends. (Fleet Bank, for example.)