a tale of two Americas

Hurricane Katrina uncovers a tale of two Americas  Email this page     Print this page Posted: September 08, 2005 by: Editors Report / Indian Country Today Most all of the white folks got out. Many people of color, it would seem, did not. This is the unavoidable and indelible reality confronting anyone and everyone who watched on television the horrific series of events that has unfolded in the city of New Orleans.

In the face of an impending and overwhelming catastrophe, as Hurricane Katrina increased to Category 5, then dropped to 4 and set its sights on the Gulf Coast communities of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, evacuation orders went out. Yet, as is now evident, many in Katrina's path did not have the means to evacuate.

For middle-class and wealthy Americans, months of survival at a relative's house or in a hotel could be covered by a check or charged to a credit card. The purchase of a new home in another area outside the emergency zone is even within reach for some. But then there are those hundreds of thousands who live week to week on paychecks from low-paying jobs and who are reliant on public transportation. Among those families, as in all families, are newborn babies, the sick and the elderly. Suddenly, picking up and leaving doesn't seem so easy.

America's contradictions are coming into full view in this tearful saga being played out before the country and the world. Among the first is that the limiting and sometimes dangerous condition of poverty remains very much a reality of life for blacks and other people of color. As America's media have become more corporate and propagandistic in format, style and tone, very little attention has been paid in recent years to the legions of Americans who still live life on the edge of survival, often without adequate income and without even basic health care coverage.

Indian faces have been equally invisible along with the beleaguered survivors of New Orleans' Ninth Ward, until now. As our Brenda Norrell reports in her excellent series on the hurricane, the state-recognized tribes of Louisiana's coast sustained heavy damage and still remain largely out of touch as of this writing.

Until this crisis made these conditions and these faces unavoidable to the cameras, one would have believed that racial disparity was a thing of the past, that opportunity had indeed leveled out and that the admonitions of the civil rights movement were anachronistic. After all, Michael Jordan made it. So, too, did Will Smith and Condoleezza Rice. See Oprah Winfrey: she made it big in the country that rewards honest, hard work. She bought a $50 million home in Montecito, Calif. and revels in lavish parties with the rich and famous. Few income and racial barriers remain in the wealthiest country on Earth, or so we are often led to believe.

This leads to another glaring contradiction - how and where the richest country on Earth chooses to direct its wealth. During the past several years we've witnessed Congress and a president often guided by ideology rather than facts and acting contrary to the actual needs of the American people.

On the matter of stem cell research: Limit federal funding to obsolete lines. On the conflict with Muslim terrorists: Use false intelligence to justify and prosecute a bogus war against a country, Iraq, that had no direct involvement in Sept. 11, 2001 - leading to tens of thousands of dead and maimed. On global warming: Stall for time (which our grandchildren simply do not have) based on the conjured and disingenuous excuse that more research is needed - no need to actually listen to the consensus among the vast majority of the world's scientists or Inuit elders on the front lines. Want to see more poor women of all colors suffer? Whittle away at their reproductive rights and freedoms, including access to legitimate and scientifically proven contraception, to serve the interests of your own narrow religious beliefs.

And when studies called for increased federal funding to buttress the levees surrounding and protecting the bowl that is New Orleans, in a state with a Democratic governor, reject their request and hope for the best. It is not that America doesn't have the resources to take care of its own; it does. It's just that those in power today really don't care about those in need until the unavoidable images become politically problematic. That, our fellow inhabitants of Indian country, is the state of the Union.

Perhaps the most glaring contradiction on display, however, is that of a callous and incompetent federal government contrasted to the generally decent and benevolent American people. Remarkably, along with the host of other issues mentioned above, ideologues within the Republican Party have been for years cutting back funding and gutting the powers of the Federal Emergency Management Agency under the auspices of limited government. So miserable and unprepared was the federal government for this disaster that at least one Gulf Coast community, having felt abandoned during those critical first 48 hours, spurned FEMA officials when they eventually did show up.

The mitigation of the disaster after Katrina had stormed through was, in some respects, basic. People needed water, food and transportation out of the disaster zone - immediately. Numerous stories have been told of private Americans making their way to the water's edge to launch small boats in an effort to ferry residents to the New Orleans Superdome or to highways leading out of town.

Indian tribes have responded, too. The Tunica-Biloxi have sheltered more than 500 evacuees in their Paragon Casino. NIGA and the NCAI have set up relief funds. The Mohegan-owned Connecticut Sun basketball team dedicated the gate from its WNBA playoff home game to hurricane relief. But even these valiant efforts were far too few to handle the volume of the need. While FEMA fiddled - first for hours and then for days - conditions turned wretched at the squalid Superdome, at the beleaguered New Orleans Convention Center, at desperate local hospitals and nursing homes. Many lives were needlessly lost.

There undoubtedly should be independent inquiries into the failings of government, at all levels, in their response to this disaster. But already a consensus is building that for events of this magnitude - which cross state lines and span huge geographic areas - the federal government must shoulder primary responsibility. Beginning with its marginalization of FEMA through the hiring of its director, Michael Brown (whose qualifications for the position are dubious), to the rejection of full funding to strengthen the city's protective levees, to the complete lack of preparation for the destructive floods that had been long predicted and feared for New Orleans, many difficult and uncomfortable questions need answering.

Hurricane Katrina did even more than ravage entire communities, demolish houses and uproot trees, causing violent death and destruction. It also blew the lid off America's carefully crafted veneer. America's inner cities are heavily populated by people of color - many who are poor and, as a result, remain particularly vulnerable to both natural and human-made disasters. Much more needs to be rebuilt than the buildings and industries of New Orleans and those other devastated Gulf Coast communities.