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Jewish World Review Sept. 6, 2005 / 2 Elul, 5765 Race, Class And Katrina By Clarence Page
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
It didn't take long for the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina to turn into an eruption about race and class, especially in my e-mail box.
Two days had barely passed when one woman e-mailed a story about looters and snipers to me and a black colleague with her own editorial comment: "Were you people even this disgusting in the jungle?"
"You people?" I think I am supposed to be insulted. Fortunately, I do not let a few hate-filled pinheads make me a hater. Unlike her, I'm not going to judge an entire group of people based on the bad behavior of a few.
Other e-mailers sent me copies of two news photos that revealed an apparent double standard regarding black and white flood victims in New Orleans.
One of the images, shot by photographer Dave Martin for the Associated Press, shows a young black man wading through chest-deep waters after "looting" a grocery store, according to the caption.
In the other, taken by photographer Chris Graythen for AFP/Getty Images, a white man and a similarly light-skinned woman also waded through chest-deep water after "finding" goods that included bread and soda in a local grocery store, according to the caption.
Apparently, quipped a cynical blogger at Daily Kos, "It's not looting if you're white."
Such are the sentiments and suspicions about race and class that churn just beneath the surface of our daily discourse.
Would the storm victims have been rescued, fed, treated and evacuated with greater urgency had they been mostly white and middle class instead of black and poor? I don't have all of the answers, but I'm gratified that black people are not the only people who are concerned about the question.
As the misery mounted, more broadcasters mentioned what viewers could plainly see — that the vast majority of hurricane "refugees" were black and poor.
Which raises important questions: When state and local authorities made the evacuation of New Orleans a central feature of their response to hurricanes, did they consider that 100,000 to 200,000 people might not have transportation?
Did they know that more than 25 percent of the city of 1.5 million lived below the poverty line, as well as the water line?
Did they consider that a lot of those folks are sick or elderly or badly in need of insulin or oxygen or dialysis just to stay alive from day to day?
When local authorities put out word that food, fresh water and other help would be available at the city's Convention Center, did it occur to them that more than 15,000 people would show up, only to discover there was no help at all? Not even a guy with a megaphone or a clipboard?
When city streets sunk into a lawlessness too frightening to allow rescue workers to perform their work, why was neither National Guard or the regular army already prepared to swoop in?
It's not as if the authorities were not warned. President Bush was simply wrong when he asserted to ABC-TV's Diane Sawyer four days after the hurricane hit, that "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees" in New Orleans.
In fact, the breach of the levees was widely anticipated. Unfortunately, government at the state, local and federal levels was not always listening.
At least nine articles in the New Orleans Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars, Editor and Publisher magazine reported on its Web site. Last year, as the cost of the Iraq war soared, Bush cut about 80 percent of what the Army Corps of Engineers requested for levee improvement at Lake Pontchartrain, according to New Orleans CityBusiness.
And the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed a hurricane strike on New Orleans among its top three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America.
You might think, with the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks fast approaching, that the feds would have a better handle on how to manage a large urban disaster.
You might think they would have become better coordinated with local governments and beefed up electronic communications, a critically serious problem for New York's first-responders on 9/11.
You might think all of that—and you'd be wrong.
That's why, as outraged as I am by looters and snipers, I'm more outraged by how sluggishly our government, the world's most powerful, responded to the crisis.
Katrina was the first big test of President Bush's proud invention, the Department of Homeland Security, and it flunked.
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Comment on Clarence Page's column by clicking here. © 2005, TMS |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
