Black like me

I joined the NAACP some time ago, not because I’m of African extraction or because I’m a person of any deeper color than the Florida sun can be blamed for. I joined the NAACP in large part because of George W. Bush’s campaign of reprisals against any one or any organization that questions him or fails to support his crusade. It has seemed to me that for years the Republicans under Reagan and the two Georges have been snubbing that fairly conservative organization and people of color in general and when George the second went after their 501 C(3) status during the last election I had to show some support.

Listening to the guests on Real Time with Bill Maher last Friday night I listened to Bill and George Carlin talk about the inherent but sometimes unrecognized racism of the Right. Contempt for the lower classes, they say, reflects a hidden racism because so many or our poor are black.

I’m not sure I buy it as an explanation of the hesitation to help New Orleans by FEMA. As I’ve mentioned, I have had personal experience with them that suggests they are simply incompetent. Indeed there was a great deal of outcry in Florida last year by Republican as well as Democrat congressmen about the ineptitude of FEMA that was felt by rich and poor along the Treasure Coast, but the questions went largely unanswered by Washington. According to an article today in the Stuart News, there now is recognition that the complaints were valid. Even local Republican Congressman Mark Foley is demanding that FEMA be rebuilt and re-staffed.

But I have digressed; I think that in the eyes of our Government, we’re all black now. New Orleans was cut adrift for the same reason all of us in the lower 98% of the wealth scale or who are not part of the Republican ascendancy have been cast adrift and have found ourselves at sea and in the same boat. It’s us against them; we’re all in it together. We are all people of color.