African American History For Dummies by Ronda Racha Penrice

Author:Ronda Racha Penrice
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Hurricane Katrina

Most of the nation watched news broadcasts stunned as Hurricane Katrina, a Category 3 storm (downgraded from Category 5), ravaged New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast in August 2005. As television news crews and others entered New Orleans to cover the story, people began to question why the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) wasn’t already on-site doing something. When the levees broke, most Americans couldn’t believe their eyes as day after day fellow Americans, overwhelmingly black and impoverished, stood on rooftops seeking refuge from the high water.

During the first critical days, their cries for help appeared largely ignored. Days later when help finally arrived, New Orleans’s African American Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana’s white female governor played the blame game. In the midst of all this, African Americans in particular began asking, “Where is Bush?” Rapper/producer Kanye West expressed the unspoken thoughts of many African Americans when he stated, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people,” during a live telethon.

Although more African Americans than white Americans believed that race and class motivated the government inaction on all levels, Hurricane Katrina did bring more mainstream attention to those issues. The media referencing of fleeing New Orleans residents as “refugees” instead of “evacuees” or in its portrayal of hungry African Americans as looters and white Americans as “finding food” opened up much-needed discussions about race and class in America. The New York Times even apologized for not addressing poverty in New Orleans during most of its coverage of the crescent city.

Black and white Americans responded to the needs of Hurricane Katrina survivors quickly. Ordinary American citizens have rallied around New Orleans in ways the government and insurance companies haven’t. While race and wealth disparities persist, the United States has come a mighty long way from slavery. The journey has been rocky, but inspiring as well. Instead of seeing the glass as half-empty, we have to look at it as half-full, knowing that we are free to add more water at any time.

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