http://aliciabanks.typepad.com/blog/2010/01/katrina-kanye-and-greensburg-on-tragedies-and-contrasts.html

KATRINA, KANYE, AND GREENSBURG - ON TRAGEDIES AND CONTRASTS
2006

“Southern trees bear a strange fruit…
Black bodies swingin’ in the southern breeze..
Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees…”

-“Strange Fruit” Billie Holiday

"George Bush does not care about Black people.”

-Kanye West 9/2/2005 – NBC

“Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans
And miss her each night and day
I know I'm not wrong, this feeling's getting stronger
The longer I stay away…”

-“Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans” Billie Holiday

There is a level of pain that constricts the mind and freezes the soul. There is a degree of shock that breaks the spirit and paralyzes the body. The horrors of Hurricane Katrina silenced my pen…until now.

I deeply love and admire Kanye West for many reasons. He is a homie from my native and beloved Chicago. He is an original musical genius in a sea of industry clones. He is afrocentric. He is Black and beautiful…I admire him most because he is a warrior.

Most Black celebrities are vapid, apolitical, amoral, and eurocentric sell-outs. They worship whiteness with a hypnotic vigor, fueled by cults of vastly white celebrity and rabid elitism. Most would never dare say a solitary relevant or political thing which might threaten a single penny of their opulent salaries.

I adore Kanye because he never allows his millions to muzzle his telling of rebel truths. Kanye is a real man. And, behind every great man is an even greater woman. I also adore Kanye’s mother, Donda West.

Queen Donda West is a scholar, a sage, and a superb mom. It is befitting that she would only rear a King like Kanye. Her new book entitled “Raising Kanye” is a classic about the stellar rewards of superior parenting.

Ms. West’s son has never shone more brightly than he did on the night he dared to tell the truth about President Select Shrub (George W. Bush) on national TV. Shrub’s brazen and rabid racism had exposed its gruesome face long before Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans and surrounding areas.

Renowned incidents of Shrub’s legendary racist antics abound: He demanded that a realtor refuse to sell his Texas home to any black buyers. He publicly and moronically questioned Cuban politicos about whether any blacks existed in Cuba. He aided his equally racist brother Jeb as they ruthlessly and strategically revived Jim Crow practices at voting polls nationwide in 2000 and 2004… Indeed Shrub’s brazen and blatant racism was old news long before Kanye dared to speak truth to power post Hurricane Katrina.

Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in August of 2005. Annual school years were just beginning nationwide. As a teacher of fellow Kanye fans, Hurricane Katrina was a supreme social studies lesson on the perils of systemic and cyclical poverty. I immediately took advantage of numerous teachable moments about the freedom and power of options, made available by education and assets.

I expounded upon the priceless gifts of solid educations that garner secure incomes, flexible and mobile occupations, emergency credit cards, and reliable automobiles. Most of the horrors of Hurricane Katrina proved that poverty is a fatal cage that can become a watery grave at a moment’s notice. Most of the people who died in Katrina were those who were too poor and uneducated to flee floods or fathom a future elsewhere.

The gruesome and grievous images of Hurricane Katrina will flicker incessantly in my mind like a surreal horror movie that plays perpetually. Shrub enjoyed an extended vacation while bloated black bodies floated in the streets like swollen road kill. Blacks stranded at the Superdome channeled captive claustrophobic slave ships, as Shrub’s equally racist mother, Barbara Bush, dared to publicly and laughingly taunt black victims, by claiming that their inhumane amenities were superior to their projects and shacks, that had been stolen by the storms. As blacks died in droves akin to random swarms of flies, Shrub and other callous and inept local and national politicos floundered to dodge blame, rather than seriously fashion the triage necessary to stem the tides of Hurricane Katrina’s horrors.

To this very day, residents of New Orleans are grossly neglected and horridly suffering. Poor black residents continue to be abandoned and ignored. And then, by stark contrast, there is Greensburg, Kansas. In May of 2007, tornadoes decimated this entire city. Massive relief efforts were immediate. Resumes were even quickly posted online to assist residents who were relocating. Shrub raced to encourage the residents of this vastly White city.

It appears that in only two months, Greensburg has been repaired more than New Orleans has been restored in nearly two years. This horrid contrast is far more than an American tragedy. It is a damned Amerikkkan shame.

This contrast is evident always to those of us who view the world with our third eyes. We see blatant racism in newscasts, in episodes of “Cops", in scripts of sitcoms and films, in editorials… We see what others deny or ignore because we have the clarity of courage. It is the very same clarity and courage that compel Kanye to speak rebel truths about gaybashing, sexism, and hypocrisy. It is that same courage that led Kanye to speak selflessly and heroically about Shrub’s apathy for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Like my love and admiration for Kanye, my grief over Hurricane Katrina and the death of New Orleans will be eternal. Black love and Black loss are constant themes in my life. The losses wound me. The loves heal me. These dual dances are my salvation as I endure the increasingly turbulent storms that will continue to flood Amerikkka…

See more on the perpetual racist and elitist abuses of Katrina’s poor black victims:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq426VjZD1E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dkDF5BXzpU

http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/movies/22trou.html

http://movies.nytimes.com/2006/08/21/arts/television/21leve.html

http://www.troublethewaterfilm.com/

http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/whentheleveesbroke/

http://www.amazon.com/Come-Hell-High-Water-Hurricane/dp/046501772X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262582321&sr=1-3

http://www.amazon.com/After-Storm-Intellectuals-Explore-Hurricane/dp/1595582037/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262582341&sr=1-2

http://www.amazon.com/Someday-Well-All-Be-Free/dp/1933368578/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262582380&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/1-Dead-Attic-After-Katrina/dp/1416552987/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262582401&sr=1-1

http://aliciabanks.vox.com/library/post/hurricane-obama-fizzled-out-in-nola.html

http://www.amazon.com/Two-Nations-Separate-Hostile-Unequal/dp/0743238249/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262582694&sr=1-1

{ Postscript 10/2007: The luxurious and swift amenities of the affluent victims of the Malibu fires in California, coupled with the immediate responses from Governor Ahnold/Arnold Schwarzenegger and King Shrub/George W. Bush, evince Amerikkka's two nations even more expertly...}