In 1781, Luke Collingwood, captain of the Zong, threw 131 live people overboard chained leg to leg and hand to hand in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The Zong was a slave ship. The people thrown overboard were sick and discarded to protect the crew and remaining "cargo." The result was a somewhat famous insurance claim.

In 1819, 39 Africans were cast asea from La Rodeur for the same reason.

And there's the notorious, Amistad.

We don't actually have to physically throw them overboard anymore. We call them people, sometimes, some of us; we don't call them cargo or property. Sometimes we call them labor, if they're lucky. Some of us call them the poor. Some of us say things like, "All third generation welfare women should be spayed." Some of us say things like. "Why should my tax dollars buy twinkies and cola for some fat, lazy girl who had kids just so she could get on food-stamps?"

But we don't actually have to throw them overboard, we don't consciously have to kill them. The machinery that we have created with our values and our investments, does that for us. It's not a conspiracy. There's no one to blame.

Tonight, someone on television asked the question, "Would the government's response to the victims of Katrina been better if the people concerned were rich and white?" On another local network someone asked, "Did race make a difference, did class--" Flip. "No," my husband said, "It was just bad planning."

"It's not just bad planning. It's planning that reflects the values of our institutions. We weren't invested in protecting New Orleans, because we don't--as a society--invest in the poor. Our society invests in things that have a high yield of return for those who control the investments. Why invest in the levees? Why invest in the schools? Why invest in the poor?" I asked my husband.

"Because they are the workers, the foundation, the coal..."

"But there aren't enough jobs. There aren't enough resources. Didn't the slave ships throw people overboard if there wasn't enough food and water for the whole cargo? Or if they became ill and threatened the overall investment?

"There are white people who are out of work. That's why the red cross wasn't allowed into New Orleans."

But it's not so direct as on the Zong. It's endemic. It's inwrought. It's systematic.

We can't do better because we aren't prepared to do better because we aren't invested to do better, because those who would make such investments have failed to direct our controllers.

The ray of light is in history. The story of the Amistad ended in revolt.

EDIT: typo