I have never understood how they could have so little animosity toward the country which had just virtually destroyed theirs.

I have some Vietmanese friends now living in Canada. I agree that they are quietly nationalistic. They don't mind telling me how their small country kicked our ass out. And they weren't even Communists.

I lived in an environment that you perhaps cannot comprehend. Either that, you're being purposely obtuse here. What happened in New Orleans may have followed years of institutional racism, but it was not part of a logical progression.

And while you're doing that, work on your reading comprehension.

You lived through the slave trade, slavery, lynching, Jim Crow, and contemporary discrimination, as well as a firsthand and personal "powerful emotional appreciation for the human suffering entailed by these conditions" and you are 300 years old.

Forgive me, I don't date younger women.

...and decided to be insulting. But, then, I guess ignorance is the only answer she has...

This is how the radical right wing plays it. It rarely errors in taking care that it is a surrogate rather than an elected official who makes the most base statements for their supposed movement both real and imagined. Many conservatives do not realize that they are being gamed so they will repeat disingenuous or callous remarks as if there are many others who are in agreement. It serves them no good purpose to play “follow the leader” within a divisive paradigm that exposes the inexperienced, unworldly, and disconnected sense of their environment that they act upon.

It's as if the 1950's is some venerated epoch in American history, and they'll be damned if their going to change. This is also exposed by the repetitive incidents of inadequate responses to current realities. Unfortunately, the world they want to create is not based on actual circumstances; instead, it is grounded in perceived threats to their property and personal security. The threat is not a person, group, or movement it is that people may discover self-respect and a sense of self-worth that wakes them up to the reality that they have been taken advantage or treated unfairly in ways too numerous to mention, by influential people who do not respect them.

I've often felt that one of the more compelling arguments advanced by the "movement" is that it is not its fault that people believe the deceptions; it is the victims fault for being slow, inexperienced, or naive'. It is experience that teaches to deceive. If people were not intended to be taken advantage of there would not be as many easy ones to prey upon. If one has not cheated he has not done everything he could to win.

Anyone who can convince other people to accept discredited concepts is a highly valued player. Manifest destiny and the complimentary sense of entitlement are unique in their ability to justify practically anything. We are to believe that these perceptions are a force of nature, or fate that is divinely inspired, rather than the result of anti-social psychological states. Therefore, the radical right wing insists on conformity to ideas that are self-destructive. It is the sense of certainty that it exhibits that is most unnerving, especially to those who know they do not know what they are talking about. C’est la vie

Re the Vietnamese who have settled in America: I have never understood how they could have so little animosity toward the country which had just virtually destroyed theirs. The great majority came here with the clothes on their backs, their professions gone, knowing no English, family members gone. Somehow, the Vietnamese have just dug in, moved on, and started over with a tenacity that's rather incredible.

You are full of "white myths". Your ignoorance of history, race, poverty, politics and class is stunning, which probably explains why you think you can stumble into a place like New Orleans after Katrina believing your well-meaning white paternalism will fix it and make it all better.

Quite a few of the crooks we allied ourselves with in Vietnam came over here with about the same amount of loot, adjusted for inflation, that some Iraqis have socked away. 9 billion and counting was it? Gone, disappeared, vanished, unaccounted for...

Your 'questions' were largely rhetorical and more in the nature of accusations - no point in dealing with them. Well, nitey nite - time for more of those lovely white supremacist dreams.

But you must be from Texas.

Having lived in New Orleans for 30 years - and I don't mean the suburbs but right in the thick of things where it could get really nasty, I find the naivete out there in lily white, self congratulating America perfectly laughable. I'm here to tell y'all that in matters political as in all else, blacks are capable of being just as venal as whites. To believe anything else IS racism.

The very public track records of both Bill and Hillary Clinton are indicative of anything but racism, and short of a seismic midlfe conversion, are we to believe they suddenly ran out to the nearest white sale and stocked up on white sheets? Right.

The manner in which they have lately been used by both the MSM and black America - including Wonder Boy Obama - would be shocking if it hadn't been so predictable. So yah, the guy writing in the New Republic knows what he's talking about. It's called reality.

You and deering both need to work on the reading comprehension. I hardly 'stumbled into' New Orleans 'after Katrina'. I lived there for thirty years and had to move away after the storm because we lost three-quarters of our income and could no longer afford to live there. My husband, a New Orleans firefighter for 26 years, had to take early retirement several months after Katrina because his health had been destroyed by the job. I think we contributed more than our share to the city, thank you very much.

And they usually abandon ship.

Is your husband black?

Conditions aboard the slave ships were wretched. Men, women and children crammed into every available space, denied adequate room, food or breathing space. The stench was appalling - the atmosphere inhumane to say the least. The Reverend Robert Walsh served aboard one of the ships assigned to intercept the slavers off the African coast. On the morning of May 22, 1829, a suspected slaver was sighted and the naval vessel gave chase. The next day, a favorable wind allowed the interceptor to gain on its quarry and approach close enough to fire two shots across her bow. The slaver heaved to and an armed party from the interceptor scrambled aboard her. We join Reverend Walsh's account as he boards the slave ship:

"... She had taken in, on the coast of Africa, 336 males and 226 females, making in all 562, and had been out seventeen days, during which she had thrown overboard 55. The slaves were all inclosed under grated hatchways between decks. The space was so low that they sat between each other's legs and [were] stowed so close together that there was no possibility of their lying down or at all changing their position by night or day. As they belonged to and were shipped on account of different individuals, they were all branded like sheep with the owner's marks of different forms. These were impressed under their breasts or on their arms, and, as the mate informed me with perfect indifference 'burnt with the red-hot iron.' Over the hatchway stood a ferocious-looking fellow with a scourge of many twisted thongs in his hand, who was the slave driver of the ship, and whenever he heard the slightest noise below, he shook it over them and seemed eager to exercise it. I was quite pleased to take this hateful badge out of his hand, and I have kept it ever since as a horrid memorial of reality, should I ever be disposed to forget the scene I witnessed.

As soon as the poor creatures saw us looking down at them, their dark and melancholy visages brightened up. They perceived some- thing of sympathy and kindness in our looks which they had not been accustomed to, and, feeling instinctively that we were friends, they immediately began to shout and clap their hands. One or two had picked up a few Portuguese words, and cried out, "Viva! Viva!" The women were particularly excited. They all held up their arms, and when we bent down and shook hands with them, they could not contain their delight; they endeavored to scramble up on their knees, stretching up to kiss our hands, and we understood that they knew we were come to liberate them. Some, however, hung down their heads in apparently hopeless dejection; some were greatly emaciated, and some, particularly children, seemed dying.

But the circumstance which struck us most forcibly was how it was possible for such a number of human beings to exist, packed up and wedged together as tight as they could cram, in low cells three feet high, the greater part of which, except that immediately under the grated hatchways, was shut out from light or air, and this when the thermometer, exposed to the open sky, was standing in the shade, on our deck, at 89'. The space between decks was divided into two compartments 3 feet 3 inches high; the size of one was 16 feet by 18 and of the other 40 by 21; into the first were crammed the women and girls, into the second the men and boys: 226 fellow creatures were thus thrust into one space 288 feet square and 336 into another space 800 feet square, giving to the whole an average Of 23 inches and to each of the women not more than 13 inches. We also found manacles and fetters of different kinds, but it appears that they had all been taken off before we boarded.

The heat of these horrid places was so great and the odor so offensive that it was quite impossible to enter them, even had there been room. They were measured as above when the slaves had left them. The officers insisted that the poor suffering creatures should be admitted on deck to get air and water. This was opposed by the mate of the slaver, who, from a feeling that they deserved it, declared they would murder them all. The officers, however, persisted, and the poor beings were all turned up together. It is impossible to conceive the effect of this eruption - 517 fellow creatures of all ages and sexes, some children, some adults, some old men and women, all in a state of total nudity, scrambling out together to taste the luxury of a little fresh air and water. They came swarming up like bees from the aperture of a hive till the whole deck was crowded to suffocation front stem to stern, so that it was impossible to imagine where they could all have come from or how they could have been stowed away. On looking into the places where they had been crammed, there were found some children next the sides of the ship, in the places most remote from light and air; they were lying nearly in a torpid state after the rest had turned out. The little creatures seemed indifferent as to life or death, and when they were carried on deck, many of them could not stand.

After enjoying for a short time the unusual luxury of air, some water was brought; it was then that the extent of their sufferings was exposed in a fearful manner. They all rushed like maniacs towards it. No entreaties or threats or blows could restrain them; they shrieked and struggled and fought with one another for a drop of this precious liquid, as if they grew rabid at the sight of it...

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/slaveship.htm