I found this Washington Post Article via Negrophile tonight.

"It was like going to hell and back," said Bernadette Washington, 38, a black homemaker from Orleans Parish who had slept under a bridge the night before with her five children and her husband. She sighed the familiar refrain, stinging as an old-time blues note: "All I have is the clothes on my back. And I been sleeping in them for three days."

With all the stories of looting, and images of Black people in the streets, some acting like animals, stories like this one, stories of a family just trying to survive in a time of unspeakable horror, get lost.

As I look at my own children, especially little Apollonia, sleeping peacefully in her crib tonight, my heart goes out to these people. I have been through a number of dissasters in my life, most notably the Northridge Earquake, but never have I experienced anything close to what these people are suffering.

I can't help but to think that the media images of rampaging looters must be damaging to the sense of kinship other Americans have with the victims. And yet it is stories like the one above that say to us all, "There by the grace of God, go I."

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Posted by: Alois at September 2, 2005 10:06 AM

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Posted by: Mark at September 2, 2005 03:04 PM