<p><a href=“http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200512\NAT20051214b.html[/url]”>http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200512\NAT20051214b.html</a></p>
<p>Funny numbers. I see no “case-mix” adjustment (whites live longer, and were more likely to be in nursing homes, both as a result of age and income). I don’t see the myth that was busted.</p>
<p>I think the media were clear in implying blacks suffered many more losses. Let’s not parse statistics. BTW with Medicaid most poor blacks qualify for nursing homes. Most nursing homes are heavily populated with Medicaid patients.</p>
<p>I could have told you this a long time ago. I grew up in one of the affected areas of Mississippi where my parents and older sister still live. My mother grew up in New Orleans where all of her family still lives. We were all angered by the slant of the newscasts after it happened that kept making it out to be a racial issue. My cousin is a paramedic in New Orleans and was there through all of the rescue efforts and also in the pre-Katrina evacuation efforts. New Orleans is a majority black city. There are many poor white suburbs that were hit just as badly, but you never saw them on the news. There were also whole towns in Mississippi like Waveland (which is where the eye actually hit) that were all but wiped out. Waveland is a majority white city as is its sister city Bay St. Louis which also had horrible damage. These cities and areas didn’t get the press because it didn’t make for as good of a story. The press chose to pick one angle of the story. The people at the Super Dome made for dramatic pictures…but there were people stranded and without food all over the Gulf Coast region of all races.</p>
<p>Come on, barrons, I know you’re smarter than this.</p>
<p>From a logical point of view, the article just seems silly to me–dopey in the way it seeks to use statistics about Katrina deaths to debunk allegations of institutional racism, which, in my memory, had more to do with who was left behind in the wake of inept planning, not who died. Seems like bad reporting to me–a weak-minded polemic masquerading as news.</p>
<p>“CNS News” - was formerly and accurately titled the “Conservative News Service”, but changed its name to conceal its political bias in 2000. It’s a subsidiary of Media Research Center, Inc., a right wing propaganda mill with an advisory board that includes Rush Limbaugh and such luminaries as John Dreschler of the Discovery Institute - the coyly named bunch who are pushing “Intelligent Design”. It’s funded by the Scaife foundation which is financed by inherited wealth from the Mellon family oil fortune and is used to finance right wing causes. I recomment sourcewatch.com for an interesting read on this “news” organization, including CNS’ 2004 “scoop” about how Saddam Hussein actually did have WMD’s all along.</p>
<p>As best I can tell, “CNSNews” is Barron’s favorite source of “news.”</p>
<p>“Let’s not parse statistics.”</p>
<p>Why not? Because a purported news service hasn’t done their homework and bothered to check? I mean, I could easily prove that the damage to the value of white-owned assets was much, much greater than it was to Black-owned ones, but, duh…</p>
<p>I do case-mix adjustment all the time in my work, including in death investigations and data collection. It’s not so hard to do. But I’m not surprised they decided not to do it.</p>
<p>In reporting this type of data for common consumption NO news org would do any such analysis. I also think your theory that more whites live longer and end up in nursing homes really has nothing to do with the question over which group had the most deaths. One could take the next step and say they have a very short expected future lifespan so you should not count them as much as the death of a 25 year old black.</p>
<p>Just heard a blip of evening news,“White House admits mistakes were made in responding to Katrina”. Two wrongs in two days…</p>
<p>Think I’ll go track down that “unclassifieds” thread instead…</p>
<p>I’m confused by this article. Just a few weeks ago, CNN was saying that 321 people had yet to be identified <a href=“http://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/11/17/katrina.missing.ap/[/url]”>http://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/11/17/katrina.missing.ap/</a></p>
<p>so how do they know if they were black or white?</p>
<p>Even this article says that 247 haven’t been identified and 658 have been. </p>
<p>In other words, this article is meaningless and very poor reporting.</p>
<p>Yeah, people died, and that’s horrible and wrong. But my gut intstinct is that the racism claims were pretty much based on how the survivors were treated, and who they were.</p>
<p>Let’s talk about that, and not base an argument on one particular statistic, as terrible as it is, which, cherry picked, supports an agenda for the “conservataive news service.”</p>
<p>Aren;t 6000 people (inluding children) still missing? How come we have no good system for tracking that…I don’t believe we have all the number yet, and until we do, the stats are not reliable</p>
<p>working with partial numbers does not make good reporting</p>
<p>btw CNS has a very obvious agenda</p>
<p>best not to use one source only</p>
<p>that news service is a crock</p>
<p>Kind of provides the counter balance to the left wing media, huh. Try the BBC maybe.</p>
<p>Is it then the consensus of the posters above that the inept and disorganized response to Katrina was not caused by ineptness and disorganization but rather that it was caused by rich white people (Democrats and Republicans: Mayor, Governor and President) hating black Americans enough to hope that many would suffer and some would die? In other words, the government organizations, in point of fact, run like Swiss watches (especially the Bush, Blanco and Nagin Administrations) but they simply chose not to help out ethnic minorities because they are ethnic minorities (not because they are poor, that is class distinctions, but because of their skin color)?</p>
<p>That would suggest a very ugly view of your fellow Americans but it doesnt makeyou wrong, I suppose.</p>
<p>I would say that the inept and disorganized response is thus not out of hatred, but out of indifference. And I would add that this indifference extends to class differences, as well as race.</p>
<p>No one can convince me that people that inept could have systematically planned to harm anyone. They were just over their heads at every level. The wealthy fared better because they had the assets to care for theirselves. The local, state, and federal governments helped essentially no one. The did not descrimate. They were very even handed. They ignored everyone.</p>
<p>I’m with Bandit TX on this.</p>
<p>Agreed…it would take a very cynical political/moral outlook to believe that any level of government was influenced by race in this horrible and inept ordeal: whether the Afro-American Mayor, or the Caucasian Governor or President. It is enough to impeach the inept and irresponsible response and preparation all around. To say otherwise, it seems to me, is to look for race and evil motives in everything and anything, dogmatically: but of course, to be fair, they say to a hammer, everything is pounded like a nail.</p>