TOPICAL TUESDAYS: MY TRAGEDY IS WORSE THAN YOURS!

Last week as the floods began to ravage Iowa City, I saw a curious quote from a city official: "This is our Katrina." Now I'm not trying to say that 32,000 homeless people isn't devastating. Those pictures of the houses against the bridge remind us if nothing else, that it's not that hard to dislodge a home.
That said, something really drives me crazy about this comparison and all comparisons like this. Let's look at the basic facts for a second. New Orleans is a city of several hundred thousand people. Iowa City? More like 60,000. Katrina showed us that blatant classism and racism are alive and well in America. (A for the record moment... Unlike many people, I wasn't surprised by Katrina. If asked "So if a Hurricane were to hit New Orleans, do you think the Federal Government would help the Black and poor people?" I would NOT have said "Of course! This is the land of the free!" Nope)... In Katrina 1500 people died. People were stranded on their roofs, cadavers floating through the street, tripping on corpses in the NFL's largest cemetery. Iowa City on the other hand had as of press time, one fatality. Again, the lost homes and especially memories can't be replaced. This Iowa flood was/is a disaster and the effects are still being felt. My prayers go out to everyone. But that doesn't change my basic gripe. It wasn't Katrina!

Now you may argue that this comparison was never intended to be exact. Here's the danger of all that. Some people will see it as exact. Some may even go nuts, ranting about how the media covered the government's neglect of Black folks in Katrina but not the poor white folks in Iowa. In this moment of loss and desperation, people could harbor the same racist sentiments you sometimes see when white workers lose their jobs to Black workers and blame affirmative action. You don't want people saying "If we had been Black, then the media would be more outraged by the lack of help we're getting." This isn't about that. They're two separate tragedies that affected two completely different communities in unique ways. And race probably isn't even the biggest difference here. I'd go with geography. White and Black Southerners are more similar in many ways than white Louisianans and white Iowans.

This reminds me of conversations I've had, heard, read about, where the Holocaust is compared to slavery. You can't compare! The only similarity is that something bad was done to another group because of who they were. Slavery was 400 years, the Holocaust 7+. The intent of slavery wasn't to eliminate like it was with the Holocaust but the longterm mental affects on generations were greater than the Holocaust, not to mention that in 400 years, a shit load of people died.

It's like comparing brain cancer to lung cancer. They're both bad, real bad. Can't we leave it at that? Do the brain cancer patients taunt the lung cancer patients saying "you've got a 2.3% chance of living more than 5 years, we have a .1% chance! Stop saying you've got a terminal disease!" (fyi those numbers were made up).

What is the purpose of pulling all our people apart over this shit? Why can't we say "Jews had the Nazis and American Blacks had the masters, let's be friends?" That's what they'd do on Sesame Street. Damn I'd love to see how Cookie Monster and Oscar would handle the Middle Passage or the Train Rides to Auschwitz. If anyone can make genocide and systematic oppression adorable it's Snuffie, Elmo and the Henson gang!

But seriously folks, stop the one-upsmanship. Cultures and populations shouldn't have to defend this shit. Nobel is not offering a Victim Prize. There's space enough for all of us.