Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Catholic Charities, Racism and Hurricane Katrina

Did you know that the problems in assisting the people in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina was due to racism?

Catholic Charities USA issued a document entitled: Poverty and Racism: Overlapping Threats to the Common Good. According to the
CNS report:

The document cites various historical examples of how the U.S. government and even the Catholic Church have contributed to racism and racially biased economic inequality. It gives a snapshot of the current reality of racism -- decrying wealth disparity and reflecting on current public debates such as those over immigration reform and Hurricane Katrina.

Wow! I thought that the problem with relief was due to:


(1) the corruption and ineptness of the New Orleans local government to handle this disaster (remember the video of the police officers helping themselves to shoes at the local department store – we call that looting where I come from);

(2) the corruption and ineptness of the state government;

(3) the large number of people who refused to leave the city; and,

(4) the poorly made levees.

Leave it to Catholic Charities to inject racism when all right minded people realize that the cause of the failure with Katrina is due to the failure of local governments.

I am taking them off my giving list.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am surprised and disappointed to learn of the Catholic Charities USA's twisted view of reality. Racism is a problem across the US society. There is no way it was any kind of factor in the aftermath of Katrina. White and black people were affected. White and black people were in positions of power and practiced heroics and practiced shameful nd or stupid acts. As you said, no racism, only ineptitude on a massive scale.