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No Racism Here

September 4th, 2005

Apphotoscaptions

These two photos were up on the news wires. They’ve been in the spotlight for a few days now, but here they are in case you missed them. It should be noted that while Yahoo News Photos has removed–at the request of AFP, which provided the caption–the images of the two white people walking away with groceries, the image of the black ‘looter’ (image and caption provided by AP) is still up with the exact same caption.

In anticipation of the wingnuts who will complain that the black guy was indeed looting and how dare a liberal pansy like me demand black people should never be called ‘looters,’ keep in mind that the point here is that the black man was labeled as a looter while the white people were labeled as “finding” food. The disparity and implied racism of the captions is what is at issue here, not the idea of whether or not the black guy was looting or not. All three were doing the exact same thing; call it illegal, call it necessary to survive. The fact that whites “find” and blacks “loot” when they are doing the exact same thing is the thing to rail at here. At its not just this, either; this is simply one small example of an institutionalized and subtle layer of racism that permeates our society. Another example is how the use of powder cocaine–used predominantly by whites–carries a far lesser penalty than the use of crack cocaine–used predominantly by blacks.

And then there’s the whole inability of conservatives to understand that the people who stayed in New Orleans for the most part were people who couldn’t get out, particularly the poor people. One commenter on this blog has already thrown that out there–talking about the blacks in New Orleans and commenting that people “decided” to stay behind–as it has been repeated endlessly in conservative circles on the web. This, mind you, in reference to the people who evacuated to the Superdome, not the ones who stayed at their houses out of sheer stubbornness despite having the ability to leave. And still, some of those who stayed at their homes were among the ones who had no means to leave and nowhere to go. Bill Maher said it very well:

This is what I call ‘unintentional racism.’ Because that’s the whole thing with the Bush people, they just can’t imagine, ‘Why don’t you just pack up your range rover, grab a case of Poland Spring Water out of the garage, and go to your summer home? What is the problem?’

An overstatement for comical effect, but the message is intensely viable. The days of outward racism are behind us, where men in white sheets are few and far between–but what has replaced it is a subtle bias, an institutionalized racism that doesn’t always register consciously, but is still very much there.

I dare the wingnuts to look at these two photos and claim that race had nothing to do with it.

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  1. Vin
    September 4th, 2005 at 22:13 | #1

    these two photos were up on the AP News Wire. They’ve been in the spotlight for a few days now, but here they are in case you missed them. It should be noted that while Yahoo News Photos has removed–at the request of AFP, which provided the caption–the images of the two white people walking away with groceries, the image of the black ‘looter’ (image and caption provided by AP) is still up with the exact same caption.

    Either you’d better make a clarification or a retraction. Both photos may have been up on the AP News Wire, but they are NOT both AP photos and captions. The Associated Press and the Agence France Press are two different news organizations possibly working under two different policies. If you can find two contrasting examples coming from the same news organization, that would be another matter. Not to deny racism going on, but it would be shameful to sensationalize an issue to make a point.

    In case anyone still has doubts, here’s a statement by Yahoo in response to the controversy:

    http://news.yahoo.com/page/photostatement

  2. BlogD
    September 4th, 2005 at 22:18 | #2

    Vin: thanks for pointing out the error. I have just corrected the error in the main post. And as you can see, I did correct the error later in the entry when I mentioned the different press agencies, but I missed the error at the top. I am also activating the URL link in your comment, which my blog software didn’t do for some reason.

  3. September 5th, 2005 at 06:18 | #3

    Luis,

    I assume this version of the pictures was edited together by you. I would like permission to post this on my site also as it is the easiest version I have seen to explain the situation. (And I do mean I would serve it…I am not an evil hotlinker:) ) Credit, would of course, be given to you. Let me know.

    Sean

  4. BlogD
    September 5th, 2005 at 06:21 | #4

    Sean: sure. I just took the photos and typed the exact captions beneath them. Go right ahead. Nothing proprietary here, except they belonged to AP and AFP–but because of their newsworthiness, I presume fair use applies.

  5. September 5th, 2005 at 07:02 | #5

    Thank you sir. As long as credit is given, I am sure fair use does apply in this case. My graphic skills are non-existant, so this is far better than I could have done!

  6. Anonymous
    September 5th, 2005 at 09:20 | #6

    “….keep in mind that the point here is that the black man was labeled as a looter while the white people were labeled as “finding” food….”

    OK…I accept your dare. While I agree that the photos and captions hint at “racism”, your claim that it is, in fact, a blatant sign of racism is a bit difficult to accept. We are looking at, literally, a snapshot, and making a huge assumption based on it. Did the photographers see something we didn’t? Did they talk to the individuals? Personally, I don’t care if they were “looting” or “finding food”….the three in the photos are in a bad situation and must resort to unusual acts in order to survive. Hell, I’d probably grab a case of Coke (no Pepsi here), or at least a case of Poland Spring Water.

  7. BlogD
    September 5th, 2005 at 12:56 | #7

    Anonymous: No assumptions, you simply have to think it through. Your argument is that, by observation or interview, the author discovered different actions in either case–maybe the black guy did steal, maybe the white people paid cash at an open business. However, that cannot be true considering the language. Think about it: had the white couple actually bought the food, would the caption have used the words “find from”? “Find” is not a common term for “buy,” but could be possible if open stores were scarce. However, the word “from” is the giveaway here–you don’t “find food from” a store in business. You “find food at” a store in business. “From” is used with the verb “take.” Used in combination here, the meaning is clear: they found a store and took the food, having ‘found’ it.

    Therefore, it is clear in both cases that the photographers and/or agencies knew or assumed in both cases that the people involved took the goods without paying. As for resorting to what is needed in order to survive, I noted this in the entry text (“call it necessary to survive”), as I also noted that this is irrelevant to the point: all three of those people were doing the same thing, but the labels placed on them were different. If you’re black, you’re a looter; if you’re white, you’re a “finder.”

    My point stands at full strength. Nice try, though.

  8. Morgan
    September 5th, 2005 at 14:13 | #8

    Luis,

    Sorry about the anonymous post. I thought I had included my name. I’m definitely in need of updated computer skills.

  9. Paul
    September 5th, 2005 at 16:26 | #9

    Luis… you might have to retract a blog entry for once. (Yes, I’m shocked as well.)

    The entire reason that the captions appeared the way they did is because the black guy did appear to have looted the stuff he had, while the white people had merely found it floating in the streets. In other words they were NOT both “guilty of the same thing”, as far as the photgraphers who actually shot the photos could tell.

    Now, I suppose we could later discover that the store the black guy was seen leaving (with the goods) was actually open for business and he’d legitmately made a purchase, but given the conditions in New Orleans over the past week, I really doubt it.

    There’s a news story from Sunday’s AP wire that appeared in the Seattle Times that cleared, or attempted to clear, the whole controversy up. It included this explanation of the photos, with a quote from the photographer of the white couple:”When we see people go into businesses and come out with goods, we call it looting,” said Santiago Lyon, AP’s director of photography. “When we just see them carrying things down the road, we call it carrying items.”Lyon said the photographer of the AP photo, Dave Martin, had seen the man go into the store and take out the items.

    As for the other photo, Getty said it stood by its caption and its photographer, Chris Graythen, who says the subjects of his photo were picking up items floating by in the dank waters.

    And Graythen, frustrated by the controversy, wrote an emotional response on a photojournalism Web site, SportsShooter.com.

    “These people were not ducking into a store and busting down windows to get electronics,” he wrote. “They picked up bread and Cokes that were floating in the water. They would have floated away anyhow.”

    See the news story.

    Cheers,

    Paul
    Seattle

    PS Feel free to clean/edit this a bit for clarity in the HTML formatting- I’m not very good at it.

  10. BlogD
    September 5th, 2005 at 16:42 | #10

    Paul: I read that story and I understand your point, but I disagree with the fundamentals. First of all, I find the photographer’s statement suspect. The original wording, that the white people “finding bread and soda from” a local grocery store doesn’t match with what the reporter is now saying. Again, the word “from” is key here. It does not describe what the reporter is now saying. If what the reporter claims is true, it should have been “at” or “near” or “floating outside” the grocery store; “from” doesn’t scan right, and indicates that they took it from the store. True, it may have simply been a poor choice of words, but that’s the whole point here; also, since the reporter and the news service are both under pressure and criticism, one must take their statements with a grain of salt.

    But my second point is even more relevant: saying that since the food was floating outside the store does not negate the idea of looting. The photographer seems to assume that looting requires one to break windows and enter a building, then run out with the goods; that is completely untrue. You can loot something from the middle of the street. Go ahead, look it up: the definition of “loot” is to “steal goods from (a place), typically during a war or riot, or to steal (goods) in such circumstances” (Oxford English Dictionary). The meaning of the word “loot” is attached to stealing in a time of crisis when law enforcement is generally weak; smashing windows, or even entering a building are not necessary.

    They also omitted a key part of the quote:“The people were swimming in chest deep water, and there were other people in the water, both white and black. I looked for the best picture. there were a million items floating in the water – we were right near a grocery store that had 5+ feet of water in it. it had no doors. the water was moving, and the stuff was floating away.”In other words, it was clear that the food did not belong to them, and that it came from the store. If the food floats out into the street and you take it, does that mean it’s not stealing? Of course not; if you let it float away, or if you put it back into the store, that’s not stealing. If I drop money on the street and don’t notice, you can either say and do nothing and leave, or you can pick it up and give it back to me, or you can pick it up and take it. Is the third not stealing simply because the money dropped out of my pocket?

    I make no negative judgment of what they did–I would have done the same thing in that situation. But to say that the black man is a “looter” and the white people were not simply because the black man did not wait for the goods to float out is a distinction without a difference.

  11. Paul
    September 5th, 2005 at 17:05 | #11

    Well, I guess I’m going to disagree. To me, what the white couple did wasn’t really “looting”, at least not in the understanding I have of the word and how people tend to use it.

    I hear what you’re saying, and I do think that the media coverage has been pretty overwhelmingly negative to black people, but I think in this case most people don’t think of “looting” as including grabbing stuff floating by down the street. It’s generally got to include going into the store and getting something.

    If to “loot” is to steal something from a place, then to me grabbing something that is floating down the street isn’t really looting. To grab something that’s floating down the street… but only a few feet outside of a grocery store that it’s floating out of, well, that’s a judgement call.

    (I fully recognize that this is only a matter of degree- what distance from the store makes it “not looting” and merely “finding”? A block? 20 yards? I don’t know, and I hope I never have to find out.)

    FWIW, I don’t even have a problem with the “looting” that the black guy did. I wouldn’t even call it “looting”, not when it comes to food and something to drink. I’d call it “bare survival”.

    But I can say one thing- the worst media coverage, at least in the first couple of days, was Fox News. Watching it (thankfully for short periods), all I sensed was an undercurrent of “look at what those useless black people are doing” coming through for all the Bushies. Blech.

    Paul
    Seattle

  12. less0305
    September 7th, 2005 at 11:33 | #12

    How is it a photographer, or even a newspaper caption, can be used to blame Bush of racism? Am I missing something…did Bush write the caption? Did Bush publish the photos? Where in all that did Bush figure in?

  13. BlogD
    September 7th, 2005 at 11:38 | #13

    Excuse me? Where did I accuse Bush of being responsible for the captions, or claim the captions were proof of Bush’s racism? I didn’t. Maher made the Bush reference, and even he did not mean it as either one of the above. He simply noted that people like Bush do not truly commisserate with poor people, that people of the usual Republican stripe don’t get what it means to be in poverty.

  14. Anonymous
    September 9th, 2005 at 09:27 | #14

    I think I’m beginning to understand.

    George W Bush never ‘stole’ the elections. He just ‘found’ them.

    Nanoman

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