Chapter 1 Unnatural Disasters: Race and Poverty

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Chapter 1 Unnatural Disasters Race and Poverty
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The barrage of images in newspapers and on
televisiontested the nations collective sense
of reality
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Did it test our real sense of nation, one
nation, under God, with liberty and justice for
all
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They were hurried along by the steadily
diminishing prospect of rescue by the government,
by their government. (p.2)
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From the sight of it, this was the third worlda
misnomer, to be sure, since people of color are
two-thirds of the worlds population. (p.2)
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Hurricane Katrinas violent winds and killing
waters swept into the mainstream a stark
realizationThe poor had been abandoned by
society and its institutions, and sometimes by
their well-off brothers and sisters, long before
the storm. (p.2)
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When a disaster like Katrina strikesa natural
disaster not directly caused by human failureit
frees us to be aware of, and angered by the
catastrophe. (p.3)
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Hundreds of folk, especially the elderly, died
while waiting for help. (p.4)
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The hardest hit region in the Gulf States had
already been drowning in extreme
poverty(p.5)Mississippi is the poorest state
in U.S.Louisiana is second. (See Who Are
Katrinas Victims? at www.americanprogress.org)
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Before the storm New Orleans had 103,000 poor
peopleWith a 67.9 percent black population,
New Orleans had a poverty rate of 23 percent, 76
percent higher than the national average of 13.1
percent.
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Though the national average for elders with
disabilities is 39.6 percent, New Orleans is near
57 percent. (p. 5)
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Median income in New Orleansis 31,369National
median is 44,684
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New Orleans ranks fourth of 297 U.S. metro areas
in households lacking access to cars. The top 3
metro areas are greater New York area with its
extensive public transportation system.
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Children and elderly made up 38 percent of
population, but their households accounted for 48
percent of the households without access to cars
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The poor and near-poor made up 80 percent of the
citys car-less population. (p.6)
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New Orleans has a 40 percent non-literacy rate
over 50 percent of black 9th graders will not
graduate from high school in 4 years.
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Louisiana expends an average 4,724 per pupil and
has third lowest rank for teachers salaries.
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Nearly 50,000 students cut class every day. (p.8)
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More than 83,000 citizens or 18.8 percent of the
population lacked health insuranceThe national
average is 15.5 percent. Nearly 40 million folk
do not have health insurance. They resort to
emergency room care when sick.
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Concentrated poverty when problems are
compounded and located in neighborhoodslike the
Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans
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The majority of Lower 9s residents were black,
and more than a third of them, 36 percent, lived
beneath the poverty line. (p.12) 19,000
annual income for a family of four
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Michael Ignatieff contends that the American
citizenship contracts basic term is
protection helping citizens to protect their
families and possessions from forces beyond their
control.
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According to Ignatieff, when a woman at the
convention center echoed Fannie Lou Hamers
question, Is this America? when she said, We
are American, it was shenot the governor, not
the mayor, not the presidentwho understood
that the catastrophe was a test of the bonds of
citizenship
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and that the government had failed the initial
test.(p.13)
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Ignatieff writes, So it is notas some
commentators claimedthat the catastrophe laid
bare the deep inequalities of American society.
These inequalities may have been news to some,
but they were not news to the displaced people in
the convention center and elsewhere.(p.14)
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End of Summary for Chapter 1