ashthomas//blog: Blame for New Orleans

ashthomas//blog

Sunday, September 04, 2005

Blame for New Orleans

Kanye West, Time cover-boy from a couple of week's ago and top-shelf hip-hop producer/artist, broke from the script on NBC's Hurricane relief fundraiser concert. The Washington Post has a description, but this is the money-quote:

I hate the way they portray us in the media. You see a black family, it says, 'They're looting.' You see a white family, it says, 'They're looking for food.' And, you know, it's been five days [waiting for federal help] because most of the people are black. And even for me to complain about it, I would be a hypocrite because I've tried to turn away from the TV because it's too hard to watch. I've even been shopping before even giving a donation, so now I'm calling my business manager right now to see what is the biggest amount I can give, and just to imagine if I was down there, and those are my people down there. So anybody out there that wants to do anything that we can help -- with the way America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off, as slow as possible. I mean, the Red Cross is doing everything they can. We already realize a lot of people that could help are at war right now, fighting another way -- and they've given them permission to go down and shoot us!

West, already getting a lot of play on my iPod, just rose in my estimation as a human being as well.

Kanye may be over-simplifying it in the way that only a pop star can, but he is right to point out that the crisis in New Orleans has highlighted what is a long standing and deep problem, not only in NO and the south, but all America, that is, the relationship between poverty and race.

My mother, babe-in-the-woods-type that she is, asked us today why it seemed like it was only black people looting etc on the news. We tried to explain that it was because it was the poor of New Orleans who had been left behind. Anne Rice says the same thing in the New York Times:

Thousands didn't leave New Orleans because they couldn't leave. They didn't have the money. They didn't have the vehicles. They didn't have any place to go. They are the poor, black and white, who dwell in any city in great numbers; and they did what they felt they could do - they huddled together in the strongest houses they could find. There was no way to up and leave and check into the nearest Ramada Inn.

The saddest part of all this is the fact that it was avoidable. Unlike the damage in Mississippi, which was caused by a natural event, the flooding of New Orleans is a result of lack of planning and financial tight-fistedness. CNN has shown that, despite what the Homeland Security Secretary claims, there have been concerns about this exact sort of scenario for years:

"That 'perfect storm' of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight," [Homeland Security Secretary Michael] Chertoff said.

He called the disaster "breathtaking in its surprise."

But engineers say the levees preventing this below-sea-level city from being turned into a swamp were built to withstand only Category 3 hurricanes. And officials have warned for years that a Category 4 could cause the levees to fail.

[...]

"We certainly understood the potential impact of a Category 4 or 5 hurricane" on New Orleans, Lt. General Carl Strock, chief of engineers for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said Thursday, Cox News Service reported.

Reuters reported that in 2004, more than 40 state, local and volunteer organizations practiced a scenario in which a massive hurricane struck and levees were breached, allowing water to flood New Orleans. Under the simulation, called "Hurricane Pam," the officials "had to deal with an imaginary storm that destroyed more than half a million buildings in New Orleans and forced the evacuation of a million residents," the Reuters report said.

In 2002 the New Orleans Times-Picayune ran a five-part series exploring the vulnerability of the city. The newspaper, and other news media as well, specifically addressed the possibility of massive floods drowning residents, destroying homes and releasing toxic chemicals throughout the city.

Somebody's head should roll for this cock-up. I am fully supporting the call by Juliette Kayyem at America Abroad for 9/11-style commission to look into the failures that allowed this to happen:

it would seem to me if any issue cried out for a "lessons learned" examination, it is this. There will be bi-partisan teaming to go around. When the immediate nightmare is over (anyone else not in the Hurricane's wake having problems sleeping this week?), and the more long-term nightmare begins, I never thought I'd say this, but, we should be pushing for an independent commission.

Also of interest is the New Yorker's coverage of the disaster, with essays by Nicholas Lemann and David Remnick, amongst others.

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