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Racism and poverty in the Delta

Published Sep 10, 2005 12:24 AM

What is painfully obvious about Hurricane Katrina is not that the hurricane itself had any out-of-the-ordinary tendencies, but that regardless of the storm’s category, the massive loss of life could have been averted.

Until it was far too late, the city, state and federal governments provided no means, didn’t marshal the National Guard, didn’t use the many boats and city buses—some now under water—to move people out of the city. No planes were used to fly people out of danger before Louis Armstrong Airport was closed down on Aug. 27, two days before the hurricane hit the city.

It is not that the hurricane did not consume many other parts of the Gulf Coast. Some towns in Mississippi are virtually gone. However, what happened in New Orleans uncovers the verity of life under capitalism: that regardless of the great wealth of U.S. society and the fact that workers and the poor create that wealth, most are left to fend for themselves in times of need and crisis.

Many articles have been written saying that the city could not withstand any storm above a category 3. Yet efforts to reestablish the coastal marsh were spurned and woefully underfunded by billions of dollars; only $375 million of a needed $14 billion came through. The weakened levees were not strengthened. Forty-four percent of the budget for the New Orleans Corps of Engineers was slashed and $30 million was cut from flood control.

Coupled with the National Guard being depleted due to the war in Iraq, and members of the Army Corps of Engineers—needed to work on the levees—also being sent to Iraq, the real aims of the capitalist class and the Bush administration become startlingly clear. It is more important to them to shore up their occupation of Iraq, to steal the Iraqi people’s oil reserves, than it is to protect the people of New Orleans and the delta from a storm that years earlier had been predicted would level this region.

Without transportation, people were forced to line up at the Superdome, where they were searched and told they would need their own food and water. Many thousands were turned away and sent to schools or back to their homes.

Hurricane Katrina exposed the anarchy of the capitalist system, especially during times of great crisis, and the racism and callousness of the Bush administration. No one will soon forget that Bush remained on vacation while the category 5 storm churned in the Gulf. Neither will it be forgotten how the victims of the storm were blamed by high-ranking officials like FEMA head Michael Brown.

Race and class underlying factors

The Gulf Coast is predominantly Black. Therefore, much of the area hit by the hurricane was predominantly Black, along with poor white. Mississippi’s average per capita income, at $24,650, is the lowest of any state. Louisiana is ranked number 42 with $27,581 and Alabama number 40 with $27,795, compared to $32,937 nationally. All three states have poverty rates higher than the national average.

Racism is inherent under capitalism and the legacy of racism in New Orleans has led to a predominantly Black city being ill prepared. Many of its residents are desperately poor; disproportionately jobless, underemployed and imprisoned; homeless and with a sub-par public education system. The jobs available are mainly low-paying, in the service industry.

Over 27 percent of the New Orleans population lives below the poverty line. Sixty-seven percent of the city is Black, and this population makes up the great majority of the poor—the ones left behind in every area of life. The homes that African Americans live in are mostly old or rundown tenements in the lower-lying areas of the city.

Another startling fact is that more than a third of the Black population lack automobiles. Both Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Mayor Ray Nagin decreed that those with the means to do so should evacuate the city before Katrina hit. Poor Black people did not have the means to leave on their own; they couldn’t afford to own a car because of poverty or infirmity.

In the aftermath of the hurricane, Black people across the country have become incensed over the gross criminal negligence of all levels of government. The images of the poor, mostly Black, the elderly and children being ignored, dying slowly from hunger and dehydration, havebeen burned in people’s minds. This may lead many to wonder or have doubts about the government’s intent, but the statistics don’t lie.

For decades, the local ruling class of New Orleans has re-segregated the city, destroying low-income housing to make way for expensive homes, townhouses and super retail stores in an area above sea-level.

The conspiracy is of the capitalists’ making and is happening across the country. But in New Orleans it has been tragically revealed by Hurricane Katrina, for all the world to see. And with the destruction and the gruesome task of recovering thousands of dead bodies comes news that the unemployment rate for the hurricane-ravaged areas is to climb to 25 percent. Can the situation become devastatingly worse?

That is why the call to bring the troops home must be amplified—to stop the suffering and murder of the Iraqi people, to stop the loss of life of the many poor and oppressed sucked into the war machine by the poverty draft, and now so that the funds being consumed by the imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan can go instead to rebuilding the Gulf Coast and New Orleans.

The 25 percent unemployment rate does not have to be. It won’t be if no expense is spared and the people of the Gulf Coast are allowed to rebuild on their own terms and in their own interests.