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It took an unspeakable tragedy to shake America out of its slump. In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina disintegrated the fabric of thousands of lives. He surmounted the dikes of Louisiana and sent walls of water that turned fragile houses into matches. He sent toxic sludge into vulnerable neighborhoods and unleashed an exodus that has since transformed the demography of the Gulf Coast. And the deadly consequences of a slow crisis that claimed the lives of nearly 2,000 people revealed the faults of both local and national society. The faces of the dead, those who were abused under de facto martial law, and those who were poorly served by the disaster response, were mostly black. And the faces of the law – the law of the capital – L – the authorities that locked people into substandard housing, who decried the survivors as looters and dithered by providing help, were the most often not black.
Read: 10 years after Katrina, New Orleans is far from being cured
It was not easy to talk about what was happening then. The language of institutional racism and environmental justice was well developed, but most often relegated to the margins of public debate; courtesy appearances at conferences and weekend slots on commentary shows. If black academics and thinkers have gained importance, the thoughts of those who are marginalized – for example, those born in projects in New Orleans – have been safely ignored in the general population. In the eyes of the media, the decades of a racial Pax Americana were yet to end. The conversations about the race were tolerated as long as they never became more than that.
Then an improbable provocateur helped to upset the balance. At a telethon and benefit concert for Katrina Relief on September 2, 2005, a young hip-hop artist, just two days after the release of his second hit album, accompanied actor Mike Myers to launch his direct call to the camera. . Clumsily standing, hands in pastel chino pockets, the man immediately – at least according to Myers' reaction – switched to the script. "I hate the way they describe us in the media," he began. "If you see a black family, it means she's looting. If you see a white family, she looks for food. He stuttered, he stuttered, clearly overwhelmed by the moment and tried to please an audience while publicly seeking his own response and responsibility. "These are my people out there, so whoever wants to do something to help … with the way America is built to help the poor, the blacks, the less affluent as slowly as possible," he continued. . always trying to finish thinking. Myers tried to return to the script, returning to his call. But then he was interrupted.
"George Bush does not care about blacks," Kanye West told America.
Read: Bush: Kanye comments "disgusting" moment as president
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