hokieone Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 I agree its a little early to condemn the entire group of refugees as awful humans and don't think we should start planning a "trail of tears" type removal back to Louisana either. However, I think we all have a right to be concerned about what is going to happen to these people, regardless of race. It doesn't matter if its 40,000 white, black, hispanic, asian, whatever, its 40,000 poverty stricken people with no home. I am not naive enough to think race isn't going to make a difference in the discussions, but to me, the most underlying issue is what to do with these people for the next 90 days and longer, since I severely doubt its going to take any less than that. Houston does not need 40,000 additional homeless people in the area. One of the ongoing discussions/ arguments we have around here has been on what to do with the current population. Well, I think the problem just got a lot bigger. Just in looking at the Pierce underpass by 45, it looks more like a campground these last few days. Yes, there have always been people over there, but I think there are more now. And I think its going to get worse. Going back to something kjb said, I don't know enough about the N.O. people to group them all as people looking for handouts. However, I would agree that from what I see, Houston is not a handout driven culture. That's not to say there aren't groups of those people here just looking for handouts, but on the most part, there is a sense of "you are on your own" here. Poor populations waiting for someone to bail them out, its not going to happen. Also, I agree that we do have pretty good race relations. Despite most of the hurricane discussions here ending up bringing about race, I think Houston has a pretty good acceptance for the most part. This doesn't mean people don't have embedded ideals, and this could end up being an event that unforunately brings out a lot of those thoughts. I honestly think my biggest question and what most people's questions should be is what is the long term plan. The answer isn't easy, but just like anything, if our officials aren't starting to formulate a plan, than that is when the problems will come about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heights2Bastrop Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 I recently made a comment on another thread wondering if the Astrodome had locks to keep people in as well as out. Three people asked me to explain, and rather than risk being confrontational, I deleted my post. This thread is precisely why I made the comment.My contention with mrfootball is the Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MidtownCoog Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 Y'all are a bunch of paranoid freaks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
N Judah Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 It has a lot to do with attitude. These people are consistently told and it is echoed within the community that the white man is out to get you. New Orleans is a city that is primarily black, most of the businesses are black owned, and much of the government officials are black. You would think these people would be happy with themselves being in the majority. The largest portion of these consistantly feel that they deserve som entitlement when ever they have a problem. Some neighborhoods of the city have gotten so bad that firefighters will not go in to them to put out a fire without police escort. The fire truck will wait even if they can see the house or complex burning. Too many trucks were vandalized and firefighters attacked. This is not only in the projects.<{POST_SNAPBACK}>I don't see what the 1st half of your paragraph has to do with the 2nd. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
houstonsemipro Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 Hey, my heart goes out to the refugees from new orleans, but we can't have crap here in Houston. Our crime rate will go up, then the Mayor will have to depart the refugees somewhere else in Texas, or back to Louisiana.I hope they hurry up and ship them back to Louisiana. Baton Rouge or Sheveport. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tamtagon Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 This line of dialogue is depressing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.A.S.O.N. Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 This line of dialogue is depressing.<{POST_SNAPBACK}> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJ V Lawrence Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 Well i'm sorry, i do feel that the government may be trying. But how long will it last? Not to bring the race back into the picture but that's the harsh reality of America. And DJ, as a black man, i'm surprised you can't see that yourself! YO.<{POST_SNAPBACK}>C2H, I'm not blind, yo. You gotta understand the fact that for some reason or another, whether they had to or wanted to, the people currently in New Orleans stayed out the hurricane. It's not like the government handpick one race and sent them back to the Superdome to suffer. It's a desperate situation there. The government doesn't give a damn what race they are. All they care about is the fact that America as a whole is shocked and disturbed by what they're seeing come out of New Orleans, and they're forced to act on something they overlooked...a levee breakage.Yo, do you want to know the real reason why there are more black people on the news there than white people?...http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/QTTab...ang=en&-_sse=on...because New Orleans is 67.9 percent black.Also, http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/QTTab...=false&-_sse=on27.9 percent of the city is below the poverty level. Obviously, a lot of the people still there didn't have that much money to just take off in their Lexus and leave. And the New Orleans police had a lot of their dudes quit their jobs and started looting with the people they were supposed to protect. Now guess what? There's a store down the street with a fur coat for free that you couldn't afford before. And the buses have been passing you by, and you have no communication telling you where to go. PLUS your neighbors are starting to steal other neighbor's belongings, and there's no 911 to call. So what do they do? They steal guns to protect their belongings, start gangs, and steal from other people without firearm protection to take what they need and want. It's not right. But that's what's happening there. Anarchy.Please end this race thing, dude. This isn't what the delays are about. This is about a few ignorant people popping caps at other people trying to help them, and ruining the relief efforts for the many innocent people and tourists desperate to leave New Orleans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJ V Lawrence Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 As a black man in Houston, I would be worried about what these people (N.O. refugees) are going to do to Houston's relatively 'good' race relations.BTW, CNN just reported that the crime rate is soaring in Baton Rouge due to the refugees.We're in trouble.<{POST_SNAPBACK}>I agree. The crime rate BETTER NOT rise in Houston because of the refugees. If so, it will be a disgrace to anyone that claims New Orleans as their home. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
editor Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 This thread is becoming increasingly counterproductive. I'm pretty close to closing it.There are enough problems because of the hurricane, let's not make race one of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HoustonMidtown Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 This thread is becoming increasingly counterproductive. I'm pretty close to closing it.There are enough problems because of the hurricane, let's not make race one of them.<{POST_SNAPBACK}>My co-worker just got an email from the wife of a cop working the Astrodome....they are already having major problems with crime, prostitution, gang stuff, etc.....police officers are being put on 12 hr shifts...it is going downhill fast... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MidtownCoog Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 The Dome is on FIRE!I can see it from my window right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
N Judah Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 Just smoke or can you see flames? Is it a big fire? On the roof or what? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MidtownCoog Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 I am just kidding. It's so hazy, I can barely see it today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJ V Lawrence Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 I am just kidding. It's so hazy, I can barely see it today.<{POST_SNAPBACK}>With all due respect, that's not funny, man. I guess you were joking, but I'm not in Houston right now. All my information on what's going on there is coming either from Houston Chronicle, CNN, international news, or from HAIF. Please be careful with your wording. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MidtownCoog Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 Just trying to encourage the editor to kill this thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
H-Town Man Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 Look, growing up in Louisiana just outside of New Orleans, I regularly saw New Orleans on TV and have visited the city myself may of times. I use to think the portrayal on the news was very specific and only in small areas of the city. After going to the city many times and in different areas (non-project areas), you don't see anything different from what is portrayed on the news. In the malls, in the tourists areas, in the Sam's Club, the park, the airport, etc.It has a lot to do with attitude. These people are consistently told and it is echoed within the community that the white man is out to get you. New Orleans is a city that is primarily black, most of the businesses are black owned, and much of the government officials are black. You would think these people would be happy with themselves being in the majority. The largest portion of these consistantly feel that they deserve som entitlement when ever they have a problem. Some neighborhoods of the city have gotten so bad that firefighters will not go in to them to put out a fire without police escort. The fire truck will wait even if they can see the house or complex burning. Too many trucks were vandalized and firefighters attacked. This is not only in the projects.Delivery trucks for businesses (particularly coca-cola from experience) require police escort for deliveries and the stores have to pay the off duty police officers to preform the escort.What the topic starter is mentioning is not a closeminded stereotype from a bigot. He is describing the attitude that persist within this city and in several urban cities in the US. Just throwing out that someone is a bigot for telling the truth eventhough it is not politically correct or racially sensitive is not acceptable. Public school teachers from all over the city will tell you the same thing. My mom (a retired teacher) used to talk to these teachers regularly at conferences.Yes, there are good poeple within these groups. I've seen those too, but they rarely have to power to put others in control or they have perception the problems are the white mans fault and don't try to solve them.This conversation regularly fuels up every year in Louisiana on a public television show. It usually is a week long debate. I remeber watching them (my mom and dad made me and I eventually got really interested) on LPB (louisiana public broadcasting).The largest problems from all the material I've heard about this that some cities like New Orleans are entitlement cities. These cities aren't like Houston where entrepeneural spirit is encouraged and exist within the city and county governments. Most of the lower income people don't want to know what they can do, but what can be done for them. With that attitude prevalent, it's no wonder looting and the problems we are seeing are popping up. Many of the looting actions we are seeing are not of a desparate people, but shameless and greedy people who feel that since there life isn't full of riches and money that it's ok to take from others who have (whether its a store or a persons home).After being in Houston for the past three years, I don't see this attitude as prevalent. Or it is small enough to where it doesn't engulf the city.This account is from experience. This account is what I see and get frustrated with. How do you help someone to help themselves if they believe that everything should be handed to them. That since they believe they have been wronged, they shouldn't have to work to improve their life.  It bothers me a lot.<{POST_SNAPBACK}>This is a very intelligent post. I don't know how many of you have ever lived for a long period of time in a bad neighborhood, but there is a mentality there that is like a psychological disease, and I don't believe that anyone who has not lived inside it can understand it.I lived for three years on the Southside of Chicago, where I attended college. This was an extremely dangerous and violent area - college students were often raped or mugged. Professors were even mugged. Groups of drunk men hung around the entrances to grocery stores. You could walk through the park in the middle of the day and see people sitting on benches, stoned on drugs. And there was more hatred among the average citizenry than I have ever seen, or imagined possible. They thought that if you were white, you were racist, and trying to oppress them. The students of the university (University of Chicago) were probably the last people on earth to be racist, and yet they hated us. If you did something kind for somebody, like picking up something that they had dropped, they looked angry and defeated, because it meant that they couldn't hate you and blame you for oppressing them. They did not want kindness, they wanted money, and would rather take it from you than be given it. Before long, it was not hard to believe that these people had a love affair with hatred - that they would rather hate you than believe anything else about you, and practically shut their eyes and closed their ears to anything that did not justify their hatred.The experience changed my understanding of what human nature is capable of. I will also at this point say that, just as kjb wrote, there were people there whom this does not describe at all - people whose love was as abnormal as everyone else's hatred. I think of them as angels. They were much fewer, but they shone out all the more for that reason. Terrible conditions and misery have a way of bringing out extremes in people, and those extremes can be either love or hate (though unfortunately it is most often hate).The fact is that these people are historically the victims of a great crime, but the tragedy is that they have a psychological disease that has exacerbated the original effects of that crime, and is continuing to inflict misery on them long after the original criminals are gone. They are convinced that everybody hates them, and they are determined to hate everybody in return. Old men who I have talked to say that their communities are worse than they were fifty years ago, before segregation ended. All the money that has been given to them, whether through government projects or simple begging, has served to make them dependent and reliant on other means of attaining a living besides work, and they are thus more miserable than either their parents or their relatives in other cities like Houston that have offered them less.From the statistics and all that has been said, it seems evident that the same disease that I saw in Chicago has existed in New Orleans. Now I would not for a second advocate not helping New Orleans refugees as much as any other refugee. I am glad they have come to us, and I hope we can do as much as possible to improve their lives. My greatest hope is that maybe the kindness that they receive will soften hearts that were previously hardened. But I think the worries that some have expressed are justified. I would worry about the crime that this will bring. I would not be surprised if major damage is caused to the Astrodome, the very place that we have offered them for shelter. I do not believe in just looking out for Number One. We need to be helpful, but we also need to be wary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedScare Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 I wish all of the posters or readers who think Houston should not have helped out these people would just say so. Those who think that our Astrodome is too precious to risk a few unappreciative refugees staying there, should say so.Don't hide behind "psycholgical disease". Don't doubt our law enforcement ability. Just say it. "I don't think we should have helped them."Anyone? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJ V Lawrence Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 I wish all of the posters or readers who think Houston should not have helped out these people would just say so. Those who think that our Astrodome is too precious to risk a few unappreciative refugees staying there, should say so.Don't hide behind "psycholgical disease". Don't doubt our law enforcement ability. Just say it. "I don't think we should have helped them."Anyone?<{POST_SNAPBACK}>For the record, I'm totally for Houston's efforts during this time for New Orleans.However, I believe now may be the time for Houston to start requesting police officers from other cities and possibly the Texas Rangers to step up temporarily to help HPD. HPD's doing a great job, but our own guys may soon be overworked. We must remember that with our decision to volunteer, we may have at least 100,000 new people in our city. Our public service people may need more federal support to ease their workload, and for our security's sake, I hope other area officers (possibly former New Orleans officers if any are here) pitch in with us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deepsouthtexas Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 Nice to see that the Enron-elitists-racists attitude is still alive in Houston. Some of you act as if there is no crime, poverty, and race problems in Houston. And others are drooling over the prospect of having corporate relocations and an increased population. Pathetic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kjb434 Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 ^^^Please don't throw around terms that don't have any backing.I much rather read these posts of true feelings of a situation. These are valid concerns. They may not pan out at all, but these concerns will help us be more prepared.I personally don't care about business relocation, increased population. I'm more concerned with how will deal with this influx of people that have no other place to turn too.Why is Enron mentioned? What does that mean? It has nothing to do with the situation.Also, you need to know what the term racists means before you throw it around too. Posters on this forum may be show prejudices, but hardly are being racist. Racism is a prejudice follow by actions against a race. I don't think people are actively going out and stoping these people from coming here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deepsouthtexas Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 ^^^Please don't throw around terms that don't have any backing.I much rather read these posts of true feelings of a situation. These are valid concerns. They may not pan out at all, but these concerns will help us be more prepared.I personally don't care about business relocation, increased population. I'm more concerned with how will deal with this influx of people that have no other place to turn too.Why is Enron mentioned? What does that mean? It has nothing to do with the situation.Also, you need to know what the term racists means before you throw it around too. Posters on this forum may be show prejudices, but hardly are being racist. Racism is a prejudice follow by actions against a race. I don't think people are actively going out and stoping these people from coming here.<{POST_SNAPBACK}>Enron was the epitome of greed. If I need to explain the greed then you don't get it. And racism hides under the cloak of prejudice in a politically-correct world. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kjb434 Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 If you believe we live in a politically correct world, then that some really thick foggy glasses you were. I'm glad we don't live a politically correct world. To me, Politically correctness hides truths and masks realities, no way to deal with problems.So some people are greedy, but their question of are the businesses going to move here is no different than what happend in New York City after 9/11. Many offices are still on Long Island and in New Jersey since they lost office space in lowre Manhattan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deepsouthtexas Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 If you believe we live in a politically correct world, then that some really thick foggy glasses you were. I'm glad we don't live a politically correct world. To me, Politically correctness hides truths and masks realities, no way to deal with problems.So some people are greedy, but their question of are the businesses going to move here is no different than what happend in New York City after 9/11. Many offices are still on Long Island and in New Jersey since they lost office space in lowre Manhattan.<{POST_SNAPBACK}>Prove me wrong then. Show me the racists with the "______ leave Houston" signs. You can't because it's a personal liability to be an overt racists. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
editor Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 Take the racism talk somewhere else. This forum is to provide helpful, useful information.Thread closed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.