I can't tell whether this is satirical or straight so I'm going to treat it as a humorlous story.

When I first read this post I was incredulous. I couldn't believe someone would be so stupid as to put these captions in nearly identical photographs of people of two different races.

I went to 'Philebrity' to check it out. My real concern wasn't the post or what 'Philebrity' had to say, but the insane captions provided with the photos. So I went to the 'Washington Post' link from 'Philebrity' and they only had the kid's picture (with the same caption as the one posted) but not the couples'. The story accompanying the photo isn't important because, I thought, looting is looting no matter what race you are, besides I was looking for the caption.

I searched Yahoo News' photo archive twice, the site attributed in the photographs, and couldn't find either photograph, let alone a caption. This makes me think that while both photos may be genuine, the captions (at least for the couple) were fabricated. I hope I'm right. Yahoo has some very compelling photographs of people of ALL races coming together in this tragedy, I would hate for this one photo comparison to leave me with a bad taste.

If anyone has a link to the original photos, prefferably with captions, or a reputable news-scource (ie. established newspapers or television reports) please provide them. Maybe I missed something or maybe the offending pics were taken down. I'm more apt to think these are manipulated photos, maybe not from 'Philebrity' but from somewhere.

The originals straight from Yahoo:

The originals: Looting vs. Finding

A couple important things to mention:

1) Yahoo is just mirroring news wires, this content is not Yahoo's creation.

2) From the discussions I have read, the AP has been consistent in calling all acts of stealing, looting, regardless of the race depicted in photos or articles (I have not researched this fact). The photo of the couple is not an AP photo/caption, it is from the AFP (Agence France-Presse).

More info on Salon (click-thru free pass required)

"We don't edit photo captions," Yahoo P.R. manager Brian Nelson told Salon. "Sometimes we take a look at the photos and we'll choose to pull photos, but the captions run as is."

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/09/01/photo_controversy/index.html

Ah, that's just silly.

It is sad to think what effect this kind of subtle racism has.

Maybe they interviewed them and said what they were doing. Looting a grocery store is necessary when the gov't we pay shitloads of money to in taxes fails to do their #1 job of protecting their citizens.

Here's an article from snopes regarding the two photos.