From the 'Sent Mail': The freak-out begins

From: The Mighty Favog
To: ***@***.com
Sent: Friday, September 02, 2005 02:52
Subject: Re: The impact of Katrina: One city


****,


The anarchy in New Orleans isn't the only thing that's starting to scare me here. The wild rumors that are spreading in city after city, and the reaction to all of this make me wonder if it isn't only among a portion of the urban underclass that the veneer of civilization is starting to come completely undone.

You don't remember the South in the '60s. I do. And what I'm hearing from all over is starting to remind me of some VERY bad s*** when Watts, Detroit and Memphis burned at the very same time white folk were being told they had to send their kids to school with "the nigras."

I remember in 1970, when Baton Rouge was about to be subjected to "neighborhood schools" as a mandatory integration plan. At that time, BR schools were being integrated by the grade-at-a-time "freedom of choice" method, starting in '63 (I think) with 12th grade. The scheme clearly was a joke.

I was in fourth grade, and I had gone to legally segregated schools all my young life.

Anyway, I remember sitting in Joe Guillot's (Mister Joe to everybody) barber shop as some guy -- horrified that his boy was going to have to go to Istrouma High with the "g**damn niggers" -- vowed that he would make sure Junior was packing heat. Many things I've heard in the last few days are giving me serious flashbacks.

****, with two little ones , don't have a pistol in the house. It's far more likely that they could get a hold of it and shoot themselves than it is ******* would suffer "New Orleanism" and you'd have to fend off the rampaging hordes.

Besides, you probably would be seriously outgunned anyway.

Maybe things are all going to hell in a handbasket. Then again, maybe not. At least not to THAT extent.

What folks need to do is to just stop it. Stop it, settle down, get a grip on their fear/reason disconnect and take a long, deep breath. Because what we might do in reaction to our worst fears could surpass our worst nightmares.


-- Favog