That said, as you can see in my post I’m bothered by use of ancestry or anything else to make these events any more real to us. When the data is wrong it’s even more of an annoyance.

The other point, about the interjection of poltical rhetoric while people are still on rooftops is reinforced, and in fact said better, in Moonage’s posting (here: http://moonagewebdream.blogs.com/moonage_political_webream/2005/09/john_grisham.html) or follow the link in the above comment.

Best-selling writer John Grisham and his wife usually keep their charitable donations very private. But they’ve decided to disclose their $5 million contribution to establish a relief fund to help Mississippians rebuild after Hurricane Katrina. In the…

In that report 94% reported an ancestry other than US but only 5.6% said French and .7% (yes point seven) said French Canada. I appreciate the common held belief of Frechn Creoles and Cajuns all through New Orleans but the data just doesn’t back it up. It appears that Celine has a “connection” to well under 1% of the folks in New Orleans.

My main point wasn’t that Larry’s demographic facts were wrong, but that his thinking was wrong. The fact that in watching the pictures of the people in need and hearing the stories one would be more moved because of a tenuous cultural connection than one would be without it is, in my opinion, asinine. These are people like you, me, Celine, Larry, etc. and we don’t need to need to create any further connections to make this any more real, painful or relevant to our lives, or of more deserving of our donations. Larry isn’t the only person who does this as it is standard fare for mainstream media disaster coverage.

In any case, if you don’t look at those who’s ancestry is ‘other,’ and just look at the largest group you’ll find that most consider themselves French, even if German is a close second. That is, of course, until you add together those who consider themselves French-Canadian with those who consider themselves French.