If there's one lesson to be learned from Katrina, it's that all is not well in America. 50 years after passage of civil rights, the black/white fault still permeates society. WaPo today has an excellent essay on the way poor minorities are denigrated and cast aside in popular culture.
They are the Other, these victims of Katrina.An often-invisible underclass, now front and center: Evacuees from New Orleans receive personal hygiene bags before resuming their long relocation trip to Dallas.
An often-invisible underclass, now front and center: Evacuees from New Orleans receive personal hygiene bags before resuming their long relocation trip to Dallas. (By Scott Saltzman -- Bloomberg News)
VideoAnd in this country, the Other is black. Poor. Desperate.
Mainstream America too often demonizes the Other because, well, we've been conditioned to do so. And because it's easier to put people in a box and then shove it in the corner, away from view. Then it becomes their problem, not ours. To talk about race, for those who are weary of it, is to invite glazed-over eyes and stifled yawns -- or even hostility.
Whether it's African-Americans looting while white people find food, evangelical leaders warning how homosexuality is destroying the moral fabric of America, or Pat Buchanan blaming immigration for all social problems, it has always been popular to box a certain category of Americans as "those people" who ruin things for the rest of us.
The tragedy of Katrina has brought to the front and center how this social undercurrent has a real impact on Americans. Wealthier, mostly white Americans evacuated New Orleans and stayed in hotels during the disaster. Poorer, mostly black Americans rode out the storm, only to be devastated when the levees broke. The response from a government that cares little about social programs was minimal. After all, they believe in personal responsibility. But it became clear to all Americans that these people weren't there because they didn't try hard enough in life or that they were somehow too stupid to leave the city early. These people were devastated because they didn't have cars, they needed to work, and they had no where else to go.
For many Americans it is simply not possible to understand how the poor live. Our politics suffers as a result. It's easy to talk about reduced funding for social programs and disaster relief in the comfort of a suburban McMansion. I hope that a silver lining from Katrina is a larger societal awareness of the American underclass. It is time we stopped ignoring these people and work to give them the respect all Americans deserve.