Two Americas

Just saw Jesse Jackson on MSNBC, interviewed by the African American woman, with long curls who has been hosting Countdown subbing for Olbermann. Real TV, like Kanye, real things going on. First of all he rips into her for calling them refugees, these are not refugees; these are American citizens. Then she asks a good question: why is this story, like the Rodney King and OJ stories uncovering 2 Americas, black and white, who view things very differently. He answers, because we have no black newsperson who hosts a show on CNN, MSNBC, not one.She responds, I'm working on it.

Rev. Jackson's point about refugees was spot on. How easily the we slipped into the habit of calling them refugees. The only other recent poor black refugees, from Haiti, were sent to Guantanamo and then back to the violent, poverty stricken island where they now live at risk of massacre by US and UN supported death squads. I would avoid being thought of as a refugee given the treatment of the Haitian refugees.