Harry Shearer Gets It Wrong

I generally like Harry Shearer but his response to A. C. Thompson's article in the Nation profiling the racist killings on Algiers Point during Katrina is way off track.

It is not how I want to face the nation.

I actually had a number of concerns about A.C. Thompson's writing style and the lack of context too. I also lamented the lack of national progressive attention to issues like the closure of Charity Hospital.

But the facts were there for all to see. Maybe you've seen this despicable video by now:





Harry Shearer read that article and watched that video and started his response acknowledging that the actual crux of Thompson's article - the part about the supremacist white mobs hunting down unarmed black men during Katrina, bragging about it on tape, and the NOPD letting it slide - is solid journalism.

Then he proceeds to rip Thompson apart for "lies" related to basically off-topic factual infractions. For instance, Shearer complains that Thompson said Katrina "crashed" into New Orleans when it is technically true that it was the undermining of the poorly constructed Federal levee system that truly precipitated our tragedy. He implies that the article was written as part of some mainstream media refusal to investigate the levee failures.

Maybe so, but way way off-topic.

In downplaying the racial tensions that exist here, he suggests that Thompson's article - about the city ceding authority to a modern day lynch mob, their failing to investigate the murders they committed, and the free murderers basically confessing on tape that they went out and shot black people for sport, all chased down over 18 months - was published by the Nation because the publication had "contented itself with a crime story."

Certainly, Thompson's article included some unhelpful and inflammatory rhetorical embellishments. It also boasts some pretty gaping context gaps. But let's be real.

This disgusting event happened in our city. The tragedy of Katrina touched people of all backgrounds. But let's not pretend for one second that African Americans weren't treated "special." I'm not just talking about the indifference of Bush and Brownie because state and city officials also played their respective parts. So did some of our police and so did some of our citizens.

Shearer's pride in anecdotal "casual, easy, frequent interactions" with black neighbors just isn't evidence that this city doesn't have gravely serious racial tensions to work through. I'd point to statistics that discuss which community is disproportionately victimized by things like, I dunno, the criminal justice system, the public education system, neighborhood recovery policy, public health policy, post Katrina economic development policy, and affordable housing policy.

Progressive New Orleanians are working to form diverse coalitions around those actual policy matters. When African American victims of supremacist crimes cannot get the NOPD to investigate, there is a huge problem, one very indicative of the many forms of institutionalized racism that progressive New Orleanians must work to eradicate.

Shearer has worked hard as an advocate for New Orleans and for the need for a massive federal infrastructure intervention. His point has always been that America needs to step up and take responsibility for the 2005 flood.

And he's right.

But New Orleanians need to step up themselves and take responsibility for local institutionalized racism. Mr. Shearer could have made all the points that he did without totally brushing aside the matter at hand. Our African American neighbors are hurt by this. We shouldn't ignore that just because Thompson said 'race war' without offering a nuanced differentiation of liberal whites and the supremacist vigilante terrorists that appear in the video.

We can draw that contrast pretty sharply ourselves by condemning these acts and demanding a full criminal investigation.

Shearer should have used his national forum to do that first and foremost. His larger mission to hold the Federal government accountable would not be undermined, it would be that much more credible.