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You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / What We Have Been Saying

What We Have Been Saying

by John Cole|  September 5, 20051:12 am| 12 Comments

This post is in: Domestic Politics

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This isn’t a race thing:

People living in the path of Hurricane Katrina’s worst devastation were twice as likely as most Americans to be poor and without a car — factors that may help explain why so many failed to evacuate as the storm approached.

An Associated Press analysis of Census data shows that the residents in the three dozen hardest-hit neighborhoods in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama also were disproportionately minority and had incomes $10,000 below the national average.

“Let them know we’re not bums. We have houses. Our houses were destroyed. We have jobs. It’s not our fault that we didn’t have cars to leave,” Shatonia Thomas, 27, said as she walked near New Orleans’ convention center five days after the storm, still trapped in the destruction with her children, ages 6 and 9.

Money and transportation — two keys to surviving a natural disaster — were inaccessible for many who got left behind in the Gulf region’s worst squalor.

“It’s a different equation for poor people,” explained Dan Carter, a University of South Carolina historian. “There’s a certain ease of transportation and funds that the middle class in this country takes for granted.”

This isn’t a race thing. This was a money thing, and right now, FEMA, the states, and every city and town and regional disaster preparedness group better be doing a gut-check to make sure that evacuation plans and contingency plans include those who are least prepared to fend for themselves.

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Reader Interactions

12Comments

  1. 1.

    Steve

    September 5, 2005 at 1:29 am

    While I agree, that this was by and large a money thing.

    From the responses I keep seeing, where people keep talking about “Those people”, you can’t help but also see the racial aspect to it.

    Frankly, I blame the media. Whenever they show someone downtrodden or poor, it’s always a black person. As a result, people instinctively just tune it out, because of the inherent biases we all seem to have.

  2. 2.

    Vladi G

    September 5, 2005 at 1:31 am

    Well, to be honest, to a certain extent in the country, money is still a race thing. The lines aren’t exactly equal, but the class lines fall pretty close to the race lines, with exceptions.

    But I don’t believe that resources were deliberately withheld or delayed because of the race of what appears to be most of the affected people. I wouldn’t call the administration or the local governments racist based on this tragedy. I’m perfectly willing to describe them grossly incompetent bordering on criminally negligent.

  3. 3.

    chadwig

    September 5, 2005 at 1:43 am

    Page down halfway and check out the article by Mike Davis regarding previous evacuations of NO.

  4. 4.

    talboito

    September 5, 2005 at 2:52 am

    As someone noted above, when you say this is “a class thing” you also mean “this is a race thing”, at least in America.

    No matter how much progress we’ve made, race is still an intricate part of class in our society.

    By the way, blaming the media for stimulating your racism is hardly an adequate response to your racist tendancies.

  5. 5.

    Andrei

    September 5, 2005 at 3:06 am

    “Well, to be honest, to a certain extent in the country, money is still a race thing. The lines aren’t exactly equal, but the class lines fall pretty close to the race lines, with exceptions.”

    I pointed Darrell to the 2002 U.S. Census Report on Poverty in a previous comment. The executive summary is that of those living below the poverty line in 2002, Blacks made up 24.1% while Hispanic made up 21.8% of that population. While non-Hispanic whites made up 8% of the those that live below the poverty line.

    That’s a whopping 45.9% of those in poverty in the U.S. are from two large minorities.

    I can’t find the stats on New Orleans right now, but some 2/3 of the city’s population is black, and half of that black population lives in the poverty range of income, if I recall correctly.

    Cole says:

    “This isn’t a race thing. This was a money thing…”

    How exactly is race not intimately tied to class given this kind of statistics about which races are poor? What is the purpose of making that distinction? So we can pat ourselves on the back and say we aren’t racist?

    Who cares? Race or class… the same people were affected as the end result. They were poor… and they were largely black.

  6. 6.

    The Disenfranchised Voter

    September 5, 2005 at 4:08 am

    I completelty agree that this isn’t a race issue. It is a poverty issue and the fact of the matter is that more blacks live in poverty than whites. Therefore, more blacks are going to seem stranded and helpless down there.

    It may seem as if this is about race but in reality it is about wealth.

    It really irks me to see people claim this is a race issue, or call someone a racist ala Kayne West because they don’t believe it is a race issue.

  7. 7.

    baronelmo

    September 5, 2005 at 5:25 am

    Yep, if Katrina proved anything, it’s that poor people ain’t worth shit in this country. Especially to our current administration.

  8. 8.

    Veeshir

    September 5, 2005 at 8:02 am

    Oh nevermind.

  9. 9.

    summr

    September 5, 2005 at 9:53 am

    Looks like the lines separating race and class in the US are pretty blurry. Even if we all agree that it isn’t a race thing, the implication is that it is a poverty thing and that doesn’t make me feel much better. Leaving the poorest and weakest to fend for themselves is terrible.

    A NYT article highlights the different experiences of two New Orleans area families:
    In Tale of Two Families, a Chasm Between Haves and Have-Nots

  10. 10.

    jobiuspublius

    September 5, 2005 at 10:33 am

    Never underestimate the inertia of more than 200 years of slavery and segregation. Having said that, poor people always get the shitty end of the stick, race makes it worse.

  11. 11.

    capelza

    September 5, 2005 at 10:50 am

    I didn’t think it was a race issue. A poverty issue yes, but in ways more subtle and not even known to those doing it.

    What I have found very sad, and thankfully never here, is on many of the blogs and boards I visit where civility is not enforced, the word “nigger” has flowed freely from the keyboards fo many people I never knew felt that way.

    The absolute mayhem that occurred in N.O. was proof to them that blacks were obviously inferior and I swear to God, one jackass actually called them “gorillas”. It did no good to point out that if they, the racists, were to find themselves in a similar situation (one never experienced in this country within living memory) that they too might be less than stoic (any of you ever been stuck in an airport with a bunch of middle class white folks for 24 hours because of weather?..). Ingnorance and lack of education are factors, but race…I was appalled.

  12. 12.

    goonie bird

    September 5, 2005 at 2:48 pm

    The junk science they are using to try and say that global warming was responible for hurricane katrina are wackos

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