This is How Rumors Get Started

Though the media has been exemplary in this hurricane crisis, they are predisposed to hype whatever danger may lurk in New Orleans as far bigger than it really is. This piece in Reason magazine shows that the reports of the dangerous black looters may be exaggerated:

All along Hurricane Katrina's Evacuation Belt, in cities from Houston to Baton Rouge to Leesville, Louisiana, the exact same rumors are spreading faster than red ants at a picnic. The refugees from the United States' worst-ever natural disaster, it is repeatedly said, are bringing with them the worst of New Orleans' now-notorious lawlessness: looting, armed carjacking, and even the rape of children.

"By Thursday," the Chicago Tribune's Howard Witt reported, "local TV and radio stations in Baton Rouge...were breezily passing along reports of cars being hijacked at gunpoint by New Orleans refugees, riots breaking out in the shelters set up in Baton Rouge to house the displaced, and guns and knives being seized."

The only problem—none of the reports were true. "The police, for example, confiscated a single knife from a refugee in one Baton Rouge shelter," Witt reported. "There were no riots in Baton Rouge. There were no armed hordes." Yet the panic was enough for Baton Rouge Mayor-President Kip Holden to impose a curfew on the city's largest shelter, and to warn darkly about "New Orleans thugs."

Sadly, I reported a child rape in the Superdome without the proper amount of skepticism. It may have been untrue:

"We don't have any substantiated rapes," New Orleans Police superintendent Edwin Compass said yesterday, according to the Guardian. "We will investigate if the individuals come forward." The British paper further pointed out that, "While many claim they happened, no witnesses, survivors or survivors' relatives have come forward. Nor has the source for the story of the murdered babies, or indeed their bodies, been found. And while the floor of the convention centre toilets were indeed covered in excrement, the Guardian found no corpses."

This is a communication issue, of course, a massive version of "whisper down the lane" in the place of adequate phone service. And these reports have real-world implications:

And it's entirely possible that, like the chimeric Baton Rouge hordes, exaggerations about New Orleans' criminality affected policy, mostly by delaying rescue operations and the provision of aid. Relief efforts ground to a halt last week after reports circulated of looters shooting at helicopters, yet none of the hundreds of articles I read on the subject contained a single first-hand confirmation from a pilot or eyewitness. The suspension-triggering attack—on a military Chinook attempting to evacuate refugees from the Superdome—was contested by Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown, who told ABC News, "We're controlling every single aircraft in that airspace and none of them reported being fired on." What's more, when asked about the attacks, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff replied: "I haven't actually received a confirmed report of someone firing on a helicopter."

Some would leap to the belief that this confirms an attitude of racism, but since most of the people on the ground were black, and that's where the reports were coming from, it's really more of an indication of the human nature to believe the worst in people. We all have to look before we leap here, and I was just as guilty, albeit briefly. I was willing to believe that, in the absence of law enforcement, there would be a certain anarchy. It's questionable exactly how anarchic it was. I've read reports that the armed "thugs" in the Superdome were maintaining order and rationing food and water to the most needy and ill. I've read that the National Guard, expecting urban warfare, were only met with despair.

I'm sure this won't stop a certain element in this society who want desperately to believe that black people simply have a tendency toward violence. This quote, from Steve Sailer, is sadly reminiscent of a portion of the population:

What you won’t hear, except from me, is that "Let the good times roll" is an especially risky message for African-Americans. The plain fact is that they tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups. Thus they need stricter moral guidance from society.

It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, that you believe these stories because you want to believe them, because they confirm your worldview. Once you dig down into the depths of such thinking, the ugly racism comes to light.