Us and Them

In watching the coverage of the recent Hurricane
Katrina disaster, particularly as it has unfolded in
New Orleans, I was struck by how quickly and easily
people redefined the people stranded in the city as
"them." No longer "us," no longer part of the
community, but irreconcilable others who only
understand force and must be dealt with a firm hand
lest they rise up and destroy everything.

Not that there wasn't significant wrongdoing going on,
particularly the armed gangs robbing, raping and
shooting at the people who were trying to help, but
among many observers there seems to be a loss of the
distinction between the real thugs and people who were
just trying to get safe food and water in a city where
all civil structure had broken down. It's particularly
notieable in certain online fora, but the behaviors of
the National Guard and other organizations actually on
the ground reveals just such a shift of attitude,
often to the point of a disturbing contempt for even
obvious innocents such as small children, the disabled
and the elderly.

As a writer, I ponder how often we quickly delineate a
simplified "us and them" characterization in our
works, so that we encourage our readers to look at
people as such oversimplified groups, rather than
individuals with their own needs and hopes and drives.
And just how much does such oversimplification bleed
into our attitudes toward people we actually deal
with?