The Journal

Issue date: 11/3/05 Section: Opinion/Editorial

Stephanie Covington

Hurricane Katrina hit the South hard, leaving behind ravaged homes, businesses and a thick residue of racism and poverty, which logically, should be hard to ignore. However, some Americans have convinced themselves that racism is not an issue in Louisiana or anywhere else in this great country.

In the Oct. 3 special hurricane issue of Newsweek, Finis Shelnutt, a business owner near the French Quarter shared his opinions about the Lower Ninth district of New Orleans. Shelnutt said, "Give it to us, and we'll turn it into golf courses. I heard in Gaelic, 'Katrina' means 'to purify.'" The only thing the Lower Ninth was "purified" of after Hurricane Katrina was the poor.

I'm the first to admit that the tragedy in New Orleans was determined by the poverty line, ultimately deciding who had the means to evacuate and who had no choice but to stay and ride out the storm. Most of the people left behind were poor; however, most of them were also African American. Some people in this country say that coincidence alone is no cause for accusations of racism, but if New Orleans isn't the poster child for what is wrong in this country, I don't know what is.

People in this country say there is no problem with racism even as it stares them in the face. Are we so ashamed of this country's heritage and the long way we have yet to go in race relations, that we have turned our back on the most obvious issues?

According to Newsweek, the Lower Ninth had a 36 percent poverty rate before Hurricane Katrina, which is three times higher than the national average and 30 percent of its residents over age 18, had no high school diplomas. The poorest areas in New Orleans, where many African Americans lived, were under water after Katrina. Higher areas in New Orleans are generally populated by upper class whites and were minimally affected by the storm. This means all of the evacuees, now spread out over 27 states and the District of Columbia, are the previously poor, uneducated and mostly African American.

Former first lady, Barbara Bush went on "Marketplace," a public radio show after her Sept. 5 visit to the Houston Astrodome and said, "Almost everyone I've talked to says, 'We're going to move to Houston.' What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them."

One can only imagine what Barbara Bush finds so scary about evacuees from Louisiana living in Texas permanently. And I doubt being homeless and living in a football arena with thousands of strangers, without belongings and privacy can be called an improvement over living in your own home, no matter how poor you were before.

Plans to place evacuees in temporary trailers have failed due to the reluctance of nearby residents to live near such settlements. Now, thousands still live in hotels around the country. Some are running out of time, being forced to leave hotel chains so rooms can be rented by higher paying customers.

I doubt the thought of displaced white families, moving into temporary trailer parks would scare people in the surrounding communities so much. I can see it now - gated trailer settlements with watchtowers and police guards. The idea isn't that much of a stretch when you consider the armed police officers and members of the Arkansas National Guard that were brought into Louisiana to scare the crap out of the people stationed at the Superdome.

We might as well call the former residents of poverty-stricken New Orleans what they really are; refugees. These people have been forced to leave New Orleans and are now struggling to survive in a country where they really have nowhere to belong, unless they are lucky enough to have family elsewhere.

We have fooled ourselves into believing that after Rosa Parks rode the bus and Martin Luther King Jr. gave his speech, the story of racism in this country ended. However, when Hurricane Katrina washed away the levy, it uncovered the rose-colored political bullshit, enabling us to see the social truth, which has been lying beneath.





Stephanie Covington, a senior journalism major, is the copy editor for The Journal.

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