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Effects of the Storm :: Hurricane Katrina :: Criticisms : Celebrities
I hate the way they portray us in the media. You see a black family, it says, 'They're looting.' You see a white family, it says, 'They're looking for food.' And, you know, it's been five days [waiting for federal help] because most of the people are black. And even for me to complain about it, I would be a hypocrite because I've tried to turn away from the TV because it's too hard to watch.
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Criticisms :: Celebrities
On NBC's Hurricane Relief Telethon, broadcast live to the east coast of the United States, rapper Kanye West criticized the Bush administration for failing to do more for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Following a monologue delivered from a prepared script by comedian Mike Myers, West nervously made the following statement:
I hate the way they portray us in the media. You see a black family, it says, 'They’re looting.' You see a white family, it says, 'They’re looking for food.' And, you know, it’s been five days [waiting for federal help] because most of the people are black. And even for me to complain about it, I would be a hypocrite because I’ve tried to turn away from the TV because it’s too hard to watch. I’ve even been shopping before even giving a donation, so now I’m calling my business manager right now to see what is the biggest amount I can give, and just to imagine if I was down there, and those are my people down there. So anybody out there that wants to do anything that we can help – with the way America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off, as slow as possible. I mean, the Red Cross is doing everything they can. We already realize a lot of people that could help are at war right now, fighting another way – and they’ve given them permission to go down and shoot us.
The first part of West's criticism was most likely aimed at Yahoo!, which had photos of hurricane victims posted on its website. An Associated Press photograph of two African-American women was captioned, "Looters carry bags of groceries through floodwaters after taking the merchandise away from a wind damaged convenience store in New Orleans on Monday, 29 August 2005."
Another AP photograph of an African-American man was captioned, "A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store in New Orleans on Tuesday, 30 August 2005..." [63]
The next photo, of a white couple, was labelled as follows: "Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store in New Orleans..." [64] This photo was from Agence France Press (AFP).
Many individuals picked out the differences between white people "finding" and black people "looting", and these observations led to controversy. After controversy on these photos erupted on sites such as Flickr and Salon, Yahoo released a press statement regarding the issue. AFP later requested that their picture be removed from major client databases, and Yahoo's link to the photo has since disappeared.
An article at Snopes contends that the photographer taking the picture of the African-American women actually witnessed the looting, while the photographer taking the picture of the white couple did not see them actually loot the bags, and in his words "I looked for the best picture. There were a million items floating in the water - we were right near a grocery store that had 5+ feet of water in it. It had no doors. The water was moving, and the stuff was floating away. These people were not ducking into a store and busting down windows to get electronics. They picked up bread and cokes that were floating in the water. They would have floated away anyhow." He posted this at SportsShooter (to find his post search for "Chris Graythen").
After West's impromptu speech, Myers resumed hosting duties of the segment, reading once again from the prepared speech. After he handed back the floor to Kanye West, West said: "George Bush doesn’t care about black people." NBC then cut the feed.
The special was edited for West Coast audiences, and West's remarks about George W. Bush were removed. West's remarks have taken on a life of their own on the web. The blog, Boing Boing, has details of a protest mash-up containing his comment about President Bush.[65]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_Hurricane_Katrina_on_New_Orleans
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