A friend of mine brought up a very good point following the earthquake disaster in China--why were we so quick to send them relief but took forever to get relief within our own country for natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina? Don't get me wrong, of course it's wonderful that we're doing anything we can to help in such a situation! But, something just seems really weird with our response to Hurricane Katrina (that most of us can agree was an almost total failure) against our immediate attention to this out of country earthquake.
This definitely needs more information, but anyone with any facts about how we've helped either situation, I'd love to see the research unfold!
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Maybe the US had simply learned from Katrina to send prompt aid to those who need it in natural disasters. If the earthquake was here in the US, the relief might probably be just as quick now. But maybe there's some politics involved too; what if the US was doing this just to 1)look good to the rest of the world, and 2)lessen tensions with China. These aren't really backed by any facts, just opinions.
like kanye west said bush hates black people, just kidding. no but how we handled the aftermathh of katrina was way to slow. i think its a good idea that we are helping out china, but i think its a good point to bring up how we are so ready to help out china when we werent able to so quickly help out people from our own country.
this post is interest to me, because I was actually just in New Orleans helping to build a school - and had the opporunity to talk to a lot of people who were there. The sad truth is lots of people still need help, and the 9th ward still looks exactly as it did after katrina. I think that the difference in responses in due more to politics than planning. Helping china is an international issue - not sending prompt aid makes tensions, which is the last thing we need with China. However, katrina was is an economically poor place (didn't effect the nice parts of new orleans), i think that there were some other party problems, and other petty political problems. So I dont think that America has really changed at all - is has just been a change in the circumstances.
Maybe it's the process in which the relief is given. In a case of a international disaster, the US generally send money and supplies and sometimes aid (as in volunteers/doctors/etc.), but I believe I heard on the radio that China refused the aid. But in a case of a domestic disaster, it maybe does more planning?
Also, China in previous disasters has generally refused all assistance, so this was supposed to be surprising that it accepted the help from the US.
I think our poor/slow response to Katrina was partly based on political issues and and partly racial issues. I've talked to a lot of people who've gone to New Orleans to help in the aftermath of Katrina and they've all said there is still a lot of racial tension. Unfortunately, there was an increase in crime and shootings after katrina because a lot of people didn't have jobs and the police were already overwhelmed with helping people. This increase in crime made a lot of people not want to go help. As for why we were so quick to send aid to china, I don't really know why, but my guess is we want to keep up good foreign relations. Especially since we import a lot of goods from china.
We need to remember that the interior problems of the U.S are much more delicate issues for politicians. They need to think of spending and the consequences of their actions. In addition our trading and dealings with China may be in America's best interest. Maybe if the United States helps China quickly it may be a huge benefit in international dealings in the future. We look like heroes!
I'm not sure if this is true but I assume that the earthquake in China caused much more damage than Hurricane Katrina. Although our government was way too slow in helping those affected by the hurricane and repairing New Orleans, I don't think they are purposefully more effective in sending aid to China. I really don't think there is any way you can argue that the government would sooner help those in China than our own citizens, I just think this earthquake caused much more damage and many more casualties than did the hurricane.
There are several possibilities to explain the situation involving the aid to Katrina and the aid to China. One possibility is that the U.S. government thought that the China earthquake was a lot more severe than Katrina. Another possibility is that the government thought that it was more important helping China than helping Katrina --although I highly doubt that. Like Matt said, maybe the US learned from its mistakes in dealing with Katrina. Or maybe no kind of weirdness is going on and the US just happened to respond to China faster. You can't really know for sure.
In my opinion, I believe that the U.S. can be, at times, more dedicated to foreign issues than domestic ones. The U.S. is too involved with how other countries react to their actions that they have to be the "hero" and the "saviour". Even in events such as World War I, the U.S. came in at the right time and became known as the deciding factor. Although the earthquake in China was a completely different issue, I believe that the U.S. still has that mindset of being a "hero" and they have to focus on foreign issues more.
I think that a lot of times the United States worries more about other countries than our own problems. We always send money and food to other countries. I think its ok to do these types of things but we should be worrying more about the people that can't afford homes and food. I don't want to sound selfish but let the governments of other countries worry about their own problems. We are not finacially set at the moment to send loads of money to other countries. As max said, people still need help from the Katrina aftermath.
I think the vast difference in how we responded to each issue has a lot to do with race. I don't think it's too farfetched to think that: had it been mostly white affluent people affected by Hurricane Katrina, our response would've been much different. The issue could've been affected by politics as well. Had the people who were affected by Katrina been supporters of Bush/Republicans and regularly contributed to Bush's, or other republicans' campaigns, instead of poor blacks who generally don't support or give money to their campaigns, the govt. would've responded with a greater sense of urgency. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to see the U.S. helping out other nations. However, it's interesting how the U.S. jumps right in to help out China, but has sort of turned a blind eye to the genocides in Sudan and Darfur. I wonder if that has anything to do with race...
America is not the most popular country in people’s minds across the world, especially in China. Chinese people generally believe that Americans are stuck up and “big bullies” that enter unnecessary wars to prove their power. However, China is also a growing economic power with one of the largest populations in the world. The last thing they want are American politicians telling them to switch to democracy. Despite the facts, it seems like the US’s response was much quicker to China’s catastrophe as compared to the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Maybe the US is trying to get a cut of China’s growing profits? I do not think this is an issue of race.
Because it a lot easier to throw money at a relief effort being put on by someone else than it is to evacuate two hundred thousand people who have been unexpectedly trapped under 15 feet of water yourself. Plus, the state of some New Orleans neighborhoods today proves the sad truth that the poorer the area the less anyone cares. These areas were neglected before the disaster, why would anyone expect that to change afterwards?
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