Warm evening air, too warm for Vermont in October, comes through the open window as I sit and write. I’m a hypocrite; I’m against global warming, but there are times when I like some of the symptoms.
I’m still trying to get some effects of global warming out of my head. At night, my dreams are covered with water and mud; I wake with a start, surprised to be in Vermont again. I was just a visitor in the Louisiana flood zone, a tourist. I can’t imagine how drowned dreams must be for those who lost everything in the hurricanes.
In Central America, Hurricane Stan, Rita’s successor, is killing people in mudslides. Commercial logging has stripped the hillsides of trees and so mud flows down, taking houses and villages with it. Mexico’s three major oil shipping ports on the Gulf of Mexico closed with the approach of the storm, but have reopened, so we can burn more gas and make more storms. In the southeast U.S., tropical storm Tammy is raining herself out over Georgia and the Carolinas, relieving a drought there. Even global warming has serendipitous eddies, in which one symptom cancels another.
Some ugly symptoms predate global warming and are exacerbated by it. The African Americans I spoke with in Louisiana were, for the most part, resolved and hopeful that they would move forward with their lives after the flood. Whites were more likely to be angry and inexplicably vented their anger on their black neighbors and fellow victims. I suppose it’s an illustration of racism’s illogic. The most ignorant bigot would not blame a hurricane or global warming or an oil spill on African Americans, but as I watched these people, men mostly, becoming overtaken by grief, it seemed like a switch was thrown and racist anger boiled to the surface. When pressed, they couldn’t explain the sudden change of subject, other than to say that either they were glad so many blacks were dispossessed or complained that all the media attention was focused on black neighborhoods. Sometimes, contradictorily, they expressed both sentiments.
It’s a comfort to feel superior to the man in the leather vest with the Confederate flag, but what do we make of the revelation that now, weeks later, we can find no substantiation to some of the most gruesome – and widely reported – stories about the New Orleans flood. Rapes and murders in the bathrooms at the Superdome; people shooting at rescue helicopters – now that calm and order have been restored, no one can verify that these things happened. Newspapers, from the New Orleans Times-Picayune to the New York Times and the Washington Post have investigated and found no evidence these things happened. What does it say about us that we were willing to believe these things, that so few doubts crossed our minds?
New Orleans’s mayor and police chief both reported these stories; both are African Americans. Was their action racist? Internalized self-oppression? Classism? (The people in the Superdome were, for the most part, poor.) Or was it just a city suddenly reverting to a pre-Internet, pre-telephone age? It makes it easier to understand how witch trials might have gotten started in Salem in 1696. Our technology has improved in 300 years, but our faith in human nature has not kept up.
The police chief, Eddie Compass, has resigned. The mayor, Ray Nagin, has announced the layoff of 3,000 city employees, about half the workforce. There’s plenty of work to do, but no money to pay the workers. Demographers predict Louisiana, a purple state (mix of red and blue) will now turn solidly red as the Democratic-voting African Americans flooded out of New Orleans will remain dispersed around the country, just as the 1927 Mississippi River flood sent tens of thousands of blacks from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago and Los Angeles.
Chronic Symptoms
Warm evening air, too warm for Vermont in October, comes through the open window as I sit and write. I’m a hypocrite; I’m against global warming, but there are times when I like some of the symptoms.
I’m still trying to get some effects of global warming out of my head. At night, my dreams are covered with water and mud; I wake with a start, surprised to be in Vermont again. I was just a visitor in the Louisiana flood zone, a tourist. I can’t imagine how drowned dreams must be for those who lost everything in the hurricanes.
In Central America, Hurricane Stan, Rita’s successor, is killing people in mudslides. Commercial logging has stripped the hillsides of trees and so mud flows down, taking houses and villages with it. Mexico’s three major oil shipping ports on the Gulf of Mexico closed with the approach of the storm, but have reopened, so we can burn more gas and make more storms. In the southeast U.S., tropical storm Tammy is raining herself out over Georgia and the Carolinas, relieving a drought there. Even global warming has serendipitous eddies, in which one symptom cancels another.
Some ugly symptoms predate global warming and are exacerbated by it. The African Americans I spoke with in Louisiana were, for the most part, resolved and hopeful that they would move forward with their lives after the flood. Whites were more likely to be angry and inexplicably vented their anger on their black neighbors and fellow victims. I suppose it’s an illustration of racism’s illogic. The most ignorant bigot would not blame a hurricane or global warming or an oil spill on African Americans, but as I watched these people, men mostly, becoming overtaken by grief, it seemed like a switch was thrown and racist anger boiled to the surface. When pressed, they couldn’t explain the sudden change of subject, other than to say that either they were glad so many blacks were dispossessed or complained that all the media attention was focused on black neighborhoods. Sometimes, contradictorily, they expressed both sentiments.
It’s a comfort to feel superior to the man in the leather vest with the Confederate flag, but what do we make of the revelation that now, weeks later, we can find no substantiation to some of the most gruesome – and widely reported – stories about the New Orleans flood. Rapes and murders in the bathrooms at the Superdome; people shooting at rescue helicopters – now that calm and order have been restored, no one can verify that these things happened. Newspapers, from the New Orleans Times-Picayune to the New York Times and the Washington Post have investigated and found no evidence these things happened. What does it say about us that we were willing to believe these things, that so few doubts crossed our minds?
New Orleans’s mayor and police chief both reported these stories; both are African Americans. Was their action racist? Internalized self-oppression? Classism? (The people in the Superdome were, for the most part, poor.) Or was it just a city suddenly reverting to a pre-Internet, pre-telephone age? It makes it easier to understand how witch trials might have gotten started in Salem in 1696. Our technology has improved in 300 years, but our faith in human nature has not kept up.
The police chief, Eddie Compass, has resigned. The mayor, Ray Nagin, has announced the layoff of 3,000 city employees, about half the workforce. There’s plenty of work to do, but no money to pay the workers. Demographers predict Louisiana, a purple state (mix of red and blue) will now turn solidly red as the Democratic-voting African Americans flooded out of New Orleans will remain dispersed around the country, just as the 1927 Mississippi River flood sent tens of thousands of blacks from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago and Los Angeles.
© Mark Floegel, 2005