You know, the things that really bugs me about the discussion here is the belief of some that the violence in New Orleans was the result of all the black people, rather than the result of just plain anarchy. The fact is that violence is not a black condition, it is a human condition. Any society that has broken down erupts in violence, no matter what race the people are. To believe that if the people of New Orleans were white this wouldn't have happened is racist, as well as not having any basis in history. It was compared to Lord of the Flies in a post above, but that book was not written about black kids, but white ones. Certainly enough examples of lawless anarchy turning into violence can be found for any race of people throughout history. Any time that an area devolves into lawlessness, violence always follows, and the bigger the area the worse the problem. People die in riots all over the world all the time, and they don't have anywhere close to the number of people involved in this.

The problem isn't the fact these people are black or poor, it is that the goverment failed them on a massive scale not seen before in American history. The superdome was a hellhole no doubt, but where the hell were the cops? Where were the National Guard? Why were they there so long? Did they just take 25,000 traumatized and angry people that have just lost everything they owned, and in some cases everyone they loved, crowd them into a small space and then leave? The results should have been obvious, no matter what race they were.