It looks like the veneer of Houstonians’ goodwill and neighborly spirit has finally worn thin enough that the rest of the country is noticing. From Newsweek:
But six months after the evacuees arrived, the city’s heart seems to be hardening. The signs of a backlash are sometimes subtle. “You’ll hear little snide remarks,” says Edwards. “People will say, ‘The reason you can’t get a job is because you can’t talk right’.” Other times, the reaction is more venomous. Among the nasty examples Dorothy Stukes, an evacuee, cites: graffiti blaring F— NEW ORLEANS in her apartment complex, schoolkids taunting her grandchildren to “swim in that Katrina water and die” and shopkeepers muttering about survivors’ sucking the public coffers dry.
“Swim in that Katrina water and die”????? That is, I think, one of the vilest sentences I’ve ever read. Coming close behind it, though, are attitudes like this, from one of Houston’s most prominent bloggers:
Pardon me for a moment, but fuck public relations firms, you stupid bitch. We need more cops in Houston and real amounts of funding for our schools to pay for teaching your kids not to murder each other (and us), not more spin-meisters telling us that everything’s going to be fine when it isn’t.
[…]
Or better yet, here’s an even better suggestion: spend money on buses to ship some able-bodied Katrina people without jobs home to help in the cleanup instead of watching soap operas, getting pissed off, and robbing the malls when their Welfare stipend runs out for the month.
This was appalling, but more than that, it’s a heart-breaking contrast from just six months ago, when Houstonians absolutely redefined the term “generosity of spirit”. From that same blogger, in that other, humanity-centric Katrina lifetime:
Remember this when you try to decide where to settle down, New Orleans. If you don’t want to go back to back, you could certainly do much worse than Houston.
That was the Houston that awed the entire country.
Newsweek’s Campo-Flores wrote “The city that so generously opened its heart could now use a little generosity itself.” That’s certainly true, and Polimom doesn’t think Houston should have to bear the entire burden alone.
This effort was never a sprint, though, and Polimom’s very sad that so many Houstonians apparently haven’t the wind to finish the race.
