Five days before Hurricane Katrina struck, 100 persons gathered at a local Catholic Church in Eastern New Orleans. They were there to talk about the city’s astronomically high rate of poverty that had increasingly become a national embarrassment. This was not a gathering of academics, local and state officials, and business leaders. They were community residents, welfare recipients, ex-offenders, and anti-poverty activists. Most of them were black.
Many of them did not have cars and had to take buses to get to the meeting. That wasn’t unusual. Nearly one out of three New Orleans residents don’t have cars. The participants had a deep sense that they were in a race against time to do something to combat the looming poverty crisis. The poverty rate for young and old in New Orleans was double and triple the national average. Nearly 100,000 households were eligible for federal Earned Income Tax Credit but had failed to take advantage of it. Nearly 60, 000 children were eligible for a health care program for low-income families but were not enrolled in. The city’s poor had grown more numerous and desperate than ever.
The times over the years that I have visited friends that live in neighborhoods away from the glitter of Bourbon Street, the French Quarter and other tourist spots, I was struck by the dire poverty, the legions of panhandlers, and homeless persons on the streets, the large number of abandoned, run down buildings, and the pock marked, unkempt streets and sidewalks in poorer neighborhoods. New Orleans was indeed the classic tale of two cities, one showy, middle-class and white, and the other poor, downtrodden, and largely low-income blacks. It was a city that didn’t wait for a disaster to happen. The city’s grinding poverty and neglect had already wreaked that disaster on thousands.
Katrina only added to the misery. What happened next was predictable. Federal bumbling, bungling, and cash shortages turned relief efforts into a nightmare. That virtually guaranteed that some blacks out of criminal greed and others out of sheer desperation and panic would take to the streets in an orgy of looting and mayhem. It was equally predictable how some state and federal officials, and some in the media would respond. They instantly branded the looters, animals, thugs, and even less charitably cockroaches. Though it wasn’t said directly, some state officials inferred that soldiers should shoot to kill to restore order. That would turn New Orleans into a war zone, and the ones that as often happens in any war that are hurt the most are innocents who have nothing to do with the criminal violence. And that is the overwhelming majority of New Orleans poor. It would further embed the image of New Orleans blacks as lawless, out of control, and undeserving of any sympathy and support.
It was even more predictable that some black leaders would wag the blame finger at Bush and city officials and accuse them of racism in not responding fast enough to the crisis. Certainly city and state officials must take some heat for the chronic neglect of the New Orleans poor. And Bush must take heat for the severe cutbacks that crippled FEMA’s ability to speedily manage, coordinate and fully fund disaster efforts. Bush’s singular obsession with the war on terrorism has also resulted in the radical shift of millions in money and personnel from disaster relief to Homeland Security. That shift in priorities further hampers federal efforts to deal with disaster relief.
The heavy handed rush to openly or subtly to paint the tragedy of New Orleans as yet another terrible example of the black-white divide in America does a horrible disservice to the poor and needy that are suffering. Admittedly a majority of them are black, but many of the victims are white too. This stirs fear, anger, and latent racism in many whites. It stirs the same fear anger, and racial antipathies among many blacks.
The comments on some black web sites pulse with wild speculation that the continual TV shots of blacks running wild in the streets are orchestrated to insure that as little as possible will be done to aid New Orleans blacks. That kind of talk smacks of defeatism. If one screams racism and deliberate neglect, and when it happens scream even louder, I told you so, it becomes a grim self-fulfilling prophecy.
The poor of New Orleans need massive aid, long term relief, and the continued goodwill and sympathy of the nation to put their lives back together. They also need a sustained public effort to lobby the Bush administration to drastically up the ante on the paltry and embarrassingly low $10 billion that he’s pledged for Katrina disaster relief. That’s less than it costs to bankroll two months of the Iraq war. Sadly, turning the monumental tragedy in New Orleans into racial one-upmanship, piles one tragedy on top of another.