Allowed To Live

This is a horrifying story, start to finish, as horrifying as it is recognizable, but there are parts of it that stood out to me:

Things quickly got ugly. Pervel remembers aiming a shotgun at a random African-American man walking by his home--even though he knew the man had no connection to the theft of his vehicle. "I don't want you passing by my house!" Pervel says he shouted out.

[snip]

Apparently thinking they'd caught some looters, the gunmen interrogated and verbally threatened Collins and Alexander for ten to fifteen minutes, Alexander says, before one of the armed men issued an ultimatum: if Alexander and Collins left Algiers Point and told their friends not to set foot in the area, they'd be allowed to live.

[snip]

Janak, who was carrying a pistol, says he grabbed one of the suspected looters and considered killing him, but decided to be merciful. "I rolled him over in the grass and saw that he'd been hit in the back with the riot gun," he tells me. "I thought that was good enough. I said, 'Go back to your neighborhood so people will know Algiers Point is not a place you go for a vacation. We're not doing tours right now.'"

He's equally blunt in Welcome to New Orleans, an hourlong documentary produced by the Danish video team, who captured Janak, beer in hand, gloating about hunting humans. Surrounded by a crowd of sunburned white Algiers Point locals at a barbeque held not long after the hurricane, he smiles and tells the camera, "It was great! It was like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, you shot it." A native of Chicago, Janak also boasts of becoming a true Southerner, saying, "I am no longer a Yankee. I earned my wings." A white woman standing next to him adds, "He understands the N-word now." In this neighborhood, she continues, "we take care of our own."

Jackass could have stayed in Chicago and learned the real "meaning" of the N-word just fine. The sentiments expressed in this story could have been expressed by any one of a hundred people I've talked to in my years living here. This isn't about the South. This is about America, as it always has been, as we keep saying here: Our fate is your fate, and it was, and it is. Our own.

I mean it, how often do you hear this? Every day? My house, my block, my neighborhood, I live here and you don't. Moreover, I BELONG here and you don't. Our lives are a crazy quilt of safe areas and danger zones, in which we make snap decisions about who "looks" like they belong here and who doesn't. But for the outright violence, but for the semi-official nature of the "militia," is there anyplace in this country this couldn't have happened? Neighborhood Watches and community meetings and everybody on the lookout, all the time, for what's coming after them. It's no wonder, no wonder at all.

And I don't know if it's our inherent paranoia or a constant drumbeat over 25 years that government is useless and offers you no protection so you'd better go arm yourselves to the teeth and put grates over your windows, I don't know if it's a sign of shallow hatred or a sign of feeling abandoned by everybody around you, that we have no responsibility for each other, that makes people feel like they have to create borders and defend them. I don't know if it's simple human nature or bullshit wish-fulfillment, make yourself a king in the new world after the old one, in which you were a boring loser, burns down. I don't know if it's some of that or all of that or a little of each of the 31 flavors of crazy going on here.

I do know it's almost Christmas, and the story we're going to tell on Thursday is about people on the road, seeking hospitality. Seeking that which is most valued, anywhere: a safe place to rest, to make a family, to feel at home. The story is about the Christ Child, yes, but also about the knock at the door, and the innkeepers who turned those travelers away. It's about the stranger who arrives in the night and needs you. Will you give him a bed, even if it's in your garage, next to the cat box, surrounded by bikes and basketballs and junk? Or will you aim a shotgun out the window, string a barricade across the street, and scream go away, and you'll be allowed to live?

A.

Comments

[Tommy T]

I remember my Mom trying to explain to me what the sign outside the Kountze city limits (right next to the Kiwanis and Rotary Club signs) meant by:

"Nigger, don't let the sun set on you here."

And I'm not that old.

[Elspeth]

White so-called-supremacists are a threat to all of us with compassionate hearts and communal natures.
Elspeth

[thescoop]

Black America and the N-word:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP2U0jmZjec

[spocko]

I remember the old line.

"If you were accused of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?"

[liprap]

This could indeed happen anywhere, but it seems more and more convenient for many to throw it all on the people in this area, "The Nation" included. This isn't "Katrina's Race War". It is AMERICA'S race war.

And, as fellow NOLA bloggers have pointed out, this is only one of many, many things that went wrong over three years ago and are still going wrong. To investigate these crimes are a beginning, not an isolated incidence.

[pansypoo]

the white tribe sure is 'good' one.

[David Aquarius]

Is that banjo music I hear in the background? Ned Beatty better stay clear of that burg.

When the sewers backed up in New Orleans, we now know where all the crap went. Someone needs to pull the silver handle on this place.

We will never advance as a people if we allow this kind of hatred to go unchallenged. Every national chain with an outlet there should pull the plug and move out. Walmart, Target, Piggly Wiggly, Home Depot, all of them. Major suppliers should boycott the rest.

Abandon them as they abandoned others. If they hate non-whites so much then we should give them what they want so much. Any business that employs people of color should not do business with any retail place in that parish.

Yeah, I know, not bloody likely. Greed in this country trumps all else. Bigotry and intolerance are acceptable as long as they pay (or pray).

[Schroeder]

Now that he's done finding redneck racists from Illinois in New Orleans, I wonder if Thompson will investigate racism in his own town. Oh yeah, well, it's probably not as sensational as finding a bunch of hicks on the West Bank. Where's he from anyway? Must be a beautiful place to live in a race-less, class-less society.

A crime is a crime, not a "race war."