http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20070828/us_time/healingkatrinasracialwounds
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While Katrina made victims of just about everyone in New Orleans, poor black residents have had the hardest time restoring their lives, with many evacuees still living outside the city and others in FEMA trailers, waiting for promised help to arrive. "I don't think African-Americans are paranoid in believing that they have suffered in ways that white people didn't," Hill says. "But the prevailing conventional wisdom among white people in New Orleans is that African- Americans had no grievances since Katrina, they didn't suffer any kind of special discrimination in the rescue and recovery, and that there is no merit to their claims that poor African-Americans were being locked out of the city and being deprived of their fundamental rights - that those were all paranoid delusions."
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This paragraph seems to imply that someone else is responsible for getting these people's lives back on track, and all they are doing is waiting until "promised help" arrives. I'm sorry that bad things happen to people, but I don't see how it is my responsibility. Conversely, I don't expect help from other people when bad things happen to me.
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"This is a wholly preventable crisis. It does not have to happen," he says. "If the federal government, which is the only entity that has the resources we need to fix the problems that we have - if they swiftly and effectively begin to address the issues of housing and joblessness and lack of health care, it would pull the rug out from under racial resentment. People would not feel abandoned, and they wouldn't feel as if they had to turn to extreme politics to achieve their ends, both blacks and whites."
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So, the city's lack of personal responsibility is the federal government's problem? I should quit my job and start whining about poor housing and healthcare. What do you expect when you're not paying for it?