Looting

Racism is always going to exist. No matter how hard we try to overcome it and rid of it completely, there are always going to be people, whether they know it or not, that distinguish between the races. Sometimes, however, I think that people are just looking to make accusations. They make non-racist comments into racist ones just to cause an upheaval. This seems to be the case in the article "Who's a Looter? In Storm's Aftermath, Pictures Kick Up a Different Kind of Tempest" by Tania Ralli. The article discusses the captions of two photos taken during hurricane Katrina's aftermath. In one photo, a little boy is trudging through chest-high water with groceries in his arms. The caption claims he has just been "looting a grocery store". The other photo is a man and woman trudging through water with backpacks and a loaf of bread. The caption claims they are shown "after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store". Though the little boy was actually seen looting the grocery store, and the man and woman were actually seen grabbing the items that had floated out of the grocery store, the pictures raised an uproar over racism. People were having a fit over racism that didn't even exist in the photos. By A.P. definition, the little boy was actually looting--he went into the store and took the items. The couple, on the other hand, was not. The author of the caption was being truthful and accurate, not racist.