And here we thought that saving lives and rebuilding a devastated area should be the focus . . . Proving that when you wield an anti-racism hammer, everything looks like a nail, a guest on Al Sharpton’s MSNBC show this morning declared that “race and class . . are the most significant aspects of this particular hurricane.”
The guest in question, Charles D. Ellison, is the Washington correspondent of The Philadelphia Tribune, and hosts a show on WURD, an African-American owned radio station in Philly.
Ellison began by lamenting the failure of the mainstream narrative about the hurricane to note the “intersecting” issues of race and class. Bonus “woke” points for alluding to intersectionality!
AL SHARPTON: Lots of talk this past week about getting billions of dollars of aid to hurricane victims, but are resources and donations getting to the communities most in need. And do race and class play a role in the storm’s aftermath?Want to bring in Charles D. Ellison, radio host of “Reality Check” on WURD and and Brentin Mock, staff writer with City Lab. Charles, we’ve seen situations too often where a lot of reaction, billions raised, and then we hear not long after it did not get to the people that need it. Where are these concerns in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, and how do we safeguard against what we’ve seen, at least alleged, in other locations.CHARLES D. ELLISON: Thanks for having me on, Reverend, good morning. The intersecting issues of race and class aren’t really being discussed that much, really if at all, in the mainstream narrative. And so, right now the focus is obviously one of recovery. Primarily that conversation centers on the assumption that everyone in the Houston area is a middle-class home owner, and that’s just not the case. We have a city that has a 30% poverty rate. Over 40% of the population actually rents. It doesn’t own a home. And that population is disproportionately black, and also brown. So we’re going to have to have a difficult, very uncomfortable, but very necessary conversation about race and class, which are the most significant aspects of this particular hurricane, particularly in the aftermath of it and as we head into recovery.
Note: you can view the longer version of segment, as transcribed above, here.
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