Based on this article alone, one would think that David Brooks thinks that because a person is black, they are probably poor.

In an article discussing the political storms after major natural disasters, essentially repeating the “the poor are hardest hit” mantra, he ends with this quote:

Civic arrangements work or they fail. Leaders are found worthy or wanting. What’s happening in New Orleans and Mississippi today is a human tragedy. But take a close look at the people you see wandering, devastated, around New Orleans: they are predominantly black and poor. The political disturbances are still to come.

From the news footage of people “wandering, devastated, around New Orleans,” it is certainly easy to tell the color of one’s skin. But to imply that simply because someone is black and in New Orleans (and devastated from Katrina) that they are poor seems to me to be making quite an assumption.

If it’s factual (and it likely is based on other reading I have done), Mr. Brooks should back it up, like this, for example, otherwise the reader might be inclined to think he’s just using this tragedy as an agenda football.

In another discussion of those who stayed behind (voluntary or otherwise), Peggy Noonan has an excellent column today. The end of which is this:

One of the things that keeps us together, and that lets this great lumbering nation move forward each day, is the sense that we will be decent and brave in times of crisis, that the fabric holds, that under duress it is American heroism and altruism that take hold and not base instincts born of irresponsibility, immaturity and greed.

We had a bad time in the 1960s, and in the New York blackout in the ’70s, and in the Los Angeles riots in the ’90s. But the whole story of our last national crisis, 9/11, was courage–among the passersby, among the firemen, among those who walked down there stairs slowly to help a less able colleague, among those who fought their way past the flames in the Pentagon to get people out. And it gave us quite a sense of who we are as a people. It gave us a lot of renewed pride.

If New Orleans damages that sense, it’s going to be painful to face. It’s going to be damaging to the national spirit. More damaging even than a hurricane, even than the worst in decades.

I wonder if the cruel and stupid young people who are doing the looting know the power they have to damage their country. I wonder, if they knew, if they’d stop it.