Reality and Fantasy in New Orleans

[jporter]

On Oct 22, 2005, at 10:17 AM, Dave Monroe wrote:

(Quoting from an article)

> ...  a clear sign of the limits of the
> multiculturalist “tolerant” approach which preaches
> open borders and acceptance of Others. It is thus
> becoming clear that the solution is not “tear down the
> walls and let them all in,” the easy, empty demand
> often put forth by soft-hearted liberal “radicals.”
> Rather, the real solution is to tear down the true
> wall, not the police one, but the social-economic one:
> To change society so that people will no longer
> desperately try to escape their own world.
>
> This brings us back to rumours and “reports” about
> “subjects supposed to loot and rape:” New Orleans is
> one of those cities within the United States most
> heavily marked by the internal wall that separates the
> affluent from ghettoized blacks. And it is about those
> on the other side of the wall that we fantasize: More
> and more, they live in another world, in a blank zone
> that offers itself as a screen for the projection of
> our fears, anxieties and secret desires. The “subject
> supposed to loot and rape” is on the other side of the
> Wall .... More than anything else, the rumors and fake
> reports from the aftermath of Katrina bear witness to
> the deep class division of American society.
>
> http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2361/
>
>

The easy assumption made by this piece is that the
"ghettoized blacks" and their third world comrades,
stuck behind the so called " true wall, not the police
one, but the social-economic one," desire that wall
to be torn down, so that they "will no longer desperately
try to escape their own world."

Well I'm not so sure they desperately want to "escape
their own world." Maybe they are often put in a position
where they have to flee their own world because of
the ruinous exploitation inflicted on them and their
environment by a system which has most first-
worlders living in an unreal (and ultimately unsustainable)
section of "Disney World." Perhaps a "trute wall" needs
not to be torn down, but re-erected in the minds of
first-worlders, between the fantasy, which we seem
to share- that everyone else wants to live in our sick,
polluted, fetish driven and exploitative style- and reality.

jody