Racism and poverty in the Delta
By
Larry Hales
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.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
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