Mayor Nagin and the Chocolate Factory

[Nooner]

Originally Posted by Bigga Petey

btw~ On the news last night, they were showing how NO has taken on a definite Hispanic flavor with all the Mexican workers that have come in to do the dirty work.

that is really interesting... I think there might be something to that... being a fellow Houstonite I too have seen what this influx has done to our schools(this even more directly since my ife is a teacher) and to the city in general and many of the changes are not in danger of being reversed any time soon.

At the risk of sounding insensitive I have to say that every week there are a few more 'families' that have decided Houston is just as good of a place to collect their government check as NO was... that is the culture that needs to be addressed, and although there are more members of one race than another who engage in that mindset, it certainly is not exclusively a 'vanilla' or 'chocolate' thing - it is a socioeconomic thing - once that cycle is begun it is hard to escape, especially when there are politicians and other social leaders who do little to encourage breaking that cycle. All I know is that if I am still in Houston when my children are school-age, they are going to private school - no matter the cost.

[mikey202]

Bottom line is this .. everyone is a racist to certian level...if you say your not then your a LIAR!!!! You have to take everyone on a individual basis...when you mix politics in with the race issue, then you get a double dose of . Now I've never been to New Orleans, but everyone that I've talked to says it was a nasty, dirty place.So, to all the dumbasses who stayed to ride out the storm. I don't care if I have to go to the Interstate with my family and start walkin to get out of the way of a Catagory 5 hurricane. In the words of Forrest Gump.."Stupid is , as stupid does!!!!" And I almost forgot," George Bush hates black people."

[Blueface]

Originally Posted by mikey202

Now I've never been to New Orleans, but everyone that I've talked to says it was a nasty, dirty place.

I was just there a couple of weeks ago.
Nasty, dirty barely describes it.
I have traveled to many cities in the US.
I lived in the NYC area for many years. We had plenty of deplorable areas in the the NYC and Newark, NJ area. I have yet to see anything so deplorable as N.O.
Some may say it is because of the aftermath of the storm but most I have spoken to tell me it was the same way prior to the storm.
What gives it away is that I could understand if all the garbage all over the place was due to the storm but it isn't. It is all fresh garbage. The papers are fresh. They are not withered from the water. To me, that says you inherrently have people that don't care to put garbage in its proper place.

Bourbon St. is supposedly back to normal. I had never visited it before the storm. If this is back to normal, wow!. Take a walk down the street and the air smells like urine. Garbage everywhere.

I personally found the whole area to be quite depressing. A few hundred bulldozers is what is needed there.

[Hammerhead]

Originally Posted by etenpenny

Im sick and tired or the double standard that says one person can use racial charged remarks to further their own political aspirations due only to the fact that they operate under SELF perpetrated illusion (with some of the American people) that they care more for this race then the other guy, when in fact they dont give a care in the world for that race any more then it will further their political future!

Bingo. Give that man a cigar!

Originally Posted by Nooner

...once that cycle is begun it is hard to escape, especially when there are politicians and other social leaders who do little to encourage breaking that cycle.

Excellent observation. A friend and I once agreed that the KKK couldn't have devised a more nefarious way to ensnare and subjugate a people than Welfare. Like 'quotas' and 'affirmative action', these programs and policies imply that some people are just not capable of making themselves better which is why they need a handout; true condescention in its purest form, and a horrible presumption to make about any group of people. And that's racism in its purest form. Analyze where these ideas come from, whose rhetoric is sharpest on them, which politicians and their party alignments benefit most from the mechanism of entitlement programs, and I think you'll begin to see a consistent pattern emerge.

Originally Posted by mikey202

Bottom line is this .. everyone is a racist to certian level...if you say your not then your a LIAR!!!! You have to take everyone on a individual basis...

Agreed, and that idea of taking each person on an individual basis is what Dr. King was trying so hard to accomplish. But I think we'd do well to separate the concepts of racism from predudice. Racism is a belief that your culture or ethnicity is superior to others. Prejudice can be almost naive in its simplest form, in that you're simply "pre-judging" (hence the term), and often those judgments, like stereotypes, can be accurate, and even entertaining. Racism is always damaging, prejudice is not necessarily so.

[etenpenny]

Originally Posted by Hammerhead

Bingo. Give that man a cigar!

I second this! haha
[SIZE="1"]just kidding : )[/SIZE]