The quote bellow is via Building The Bigger Family.
"This and this shocked me and taught me that the difference between looting and finding is sometimes about colour."
Unbelievable.
Update: It seems that the photos were taken by two separate news agencies. The "looting" was an AP photo and the "finding" was an AFP photo. AFP has now removed the photo. If you missed them, they were both photos of individuals walking through a flooded street while holding grocery items and packages. The only difference was that the AP photo included a black person who was "looting" the items. The AFP photo was of two white individuals who "found" the items.
I think the prejudice here lies with the AP, still. I don't see how you can look at a guy in that situation, water up to his chest, no decent food, electricity and water supply, and say he "looted" a loaf of bread. C'mon. That is surviving.
Thanks for the update!
Posted by: gawdessness | September 02, 2005 at 07:09 AM
Yes, I just followed gawdessness's links, and they have taken down the photo of the white people "finding" at the request of the photographer, who actually lives in New Orleans, and says that the food was floating down the street and people were picking it up so it never occured to him to write "looting". I agree that it is irresponsible to write "looted" re someone who is carrying food and drink when people are dying of that, though the photographer of THAT photo may have actually witnessed people breaking into a shop and taking the food, which would be a correct usage of the word "looting". It is unfortunate that these two photos from two different wire agencies, and two different photographers, were juxtaposed with the different words connected to blacks and whites. I do believe however that if those thousands of people in New Orleans had been uppermiddleclass white people in Utah for instance, that they would not be dying for lack of food and water in a stadium for three days. For heaven's sakes, it seems such things could be just dropped by planes and helicopters flying over from nearby states. I do believe classism and racism has a part in this. And someone on a discussion about it (if you follow the photo links, there are sites pointed out about the controversy... the flickr one has both photos) said "why quibble over the difference in wording between find and loot at a time like this". I suggest that when the policy is "shoot to kill" re looting, that is a very important wording and conceptual distinction. Cheers!
Posted by: cluttergirl | September 02, 2005 at 09:40 PM