Till and the legacy of racism

Originally published in Socialist Worker.

April 6, 2007

SHARON SMITH'S piece, "Justice denied again for Emmett Till," provides a launching pad from which we can talk about the persistence of brutal racism in the U.S. (March 9).

The recent coverage on the racist criminal injustice system, including continued coverage of the Gary Tyler case, underlines this point--but the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina are a unique microcosm of the poverty and racism that have continued to exist since the murder of Emmett Till.

A friend recently referred me to a comparison that Michael Eric Dyson made in his book Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster: In Pompeii, when Mount Vesuvius erupted and the city was destroyed, large numbers of slaves and poor servants were smothered by ash because they could not afford the horses and chariots necessary to escape.

Similarly, a predominately Black group of poor New Orleans residents were unable to evacuate because they too lacked money for transportation.

Dyson notes that many of the poor and enslaved residents of Pompeii who were left to die in the city (after the rich evacuated) spent their last few hours of life collecting riches that were left behind. Many bodies that were excavated from the site were found clutching jewelry and other symbols of wealth, seeking to experience what it was like to have some amount of luxury if even for a short while.

Dyson points out that the "crime" of "stealing" these trinkets pales in comparison to the crime that was the life of the slave/servant in Pompeii before the eruption of Vesuvius.

The analogy to Katrina and the "looting" is fitting, and the media's coverage of the hurricane, which spent vastly more time demonizing the poor Black victims of the hurricane than it did exploring the conditions of poverty and racism that so exacerbated the disaster, provides further evidence that systemic racism in the U.S. was not abolished by the civil rights movement that Emmett Till's brutal murder helped spark.

The tragedies of Pompeii and Katrina, nearly 2,000 years apart, show how class society neglects to offer the most exploited and oppressed even the means to escape an avoidable death. Today, however, a better world is possible.

Gary Lapon, Northampton, Mass.