Week 6 Reading Response 2

In “Who’s a Looter? In Storms Aftermath, Pictures Kick Up a Different Kind of Tempest” Tania Ralli writes about the issue of discriminating photographs taken during Hurricane Katrina. The pictures were highly debatable. The first photography was of a black man wading through chest deep water, carrying a Pepsi box and a full garbage bag, he was considered to be ‘looting’. The second photograph was a white couple carrying food in the same water but were considered to be ‘finding’ food.

The first photo that was of the black man was taken by Dave Martin a photographer from the Associated Press stated that he saw the man taking food out of a grocery store. The second photo was by Chris Graythen from Getty Images stated that he saw the white couple found the food in the vicinity of a grocery store. The photos created a huge controversy that boiled down to racism. Before going on assignment to the photographers for the Associated Press gave guidelines to distinguish the difference in ‘looting’ and of ‘finding’, they were told that if a person comes out of a store with goods with them that it would be considered ‘looting’. Because the man in the first photography was black and considered to be looting made that a big issue; whereas the white couple was said to have walked out of a grocery store and was labeled as finding food. Both of the situations where the same except for the color of their skin. Mr. Graythen who took the second photo stated that he did not see the couple emerge from the store, even though the door was left open and food was floating around. Mr. Graythen saw the act of finding food as a means of survival.

During Katrina I clearly remember the media being discriminating towards African Americans, they would always point out blacks that were looting, but never said anything about the white people. Their were helicopters flying in food for the survivors, but that could take hours to get to the people. Since that process of receiving food could take so long the people who survived were on their own to survive, so it makes logical sense to take food from a store. The stores were flooded to begin with, and by the time the water was gone most of the left over food would not be consumable. I believe that the Associated Press was at fault and was racist. I do not think that the people should have been considered looting, unless it was jewelry or any other outrageous item. Katrina was a huge disaster and the media discriminated all African Americans that were affected by Hurricane Katrina