itbestuk said:
That is an interesting concept. But the United States has tried over the years to blur the distinctions between classes, or at least encourage the opportunity for people to move among them. I think that part of what you are experiencing when you see the coverage of this disaster is an American city with a significant number of poor and minority people. It's an old southern city with traditions that are rather uniquely their own.
The impression isn't completely your own, however - one of the growing concerns about the scenes playing out in the media is their ability to fuel racial tensions that have subsided significantly in our society over the years. This is probably one reason why the mistakes made during this disaster are being perceived on multiple levels throughout society, and most Americans don't like what we are seeing because that isn't the way we perceive ourselves as a nation.
Even in a nation that is only 225 years old, we have some traditions of behavior that are slow to change. For example, most of the members of our Congress are heterosexual white males, even though they make up a minority of the population. But we like to think that these traditions continue because of the exchange of ideas, not the idea of limited access to institutions among some groups. And we've made some gains over the years in breaking down those barriers for everyone.
I don't think it was the deliberate intention of any government level to leave the poor, the elderly, or the racial minorities behind in New Orleans. It seems more like a combination of a planning glitch, a semi-false alarm voluntary evacuation fairly recently that didn't produce a big threat to the city, and maybe some degree of early panic when some officials realized the storm really wasn't going to turn in time to spare the city. You can bet there are going to be a lot of questions asked on every level of government before this is all over. This isn't an impression the President wants to make.
