Inequality and Katrina

I only really started watching television coverage of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath yesterday. The most striking thing about the video I saw was the one big similarity of the displaced survivors at the Superdome and convention center- almost all were black. Now, I'm not sure that this represents any conscious effort to not evacuate certain people based on their race. Rather, I think that this is a story of poverty. That poverty, though, may be strongly tied to race.

Louisiana is not a rich state. Only one third of people in the state live in census tracts with less than 12 percent poverty, a portion that is larger than only three other states and the District of Columbia. And not counting DC, Louisiana has the highest portion of its population living in tracts with over 40 percent poverty rates. I don't know if politicians intentionally ignored these people when they were considering whether to provide resources for everyone to evacuate, but failing to provide transportation to people who could not otherwise flee is just as bad.

From the Washington Post, consider what some people had to decide:

"I only got a five-passenger car," he said.

"Chevy Cavalier," said his wife.

"And," Thomas continued, "I stood there, thinking. I said, 'Okay, it's 50-50 if the water will get through.' "

Within hours the water rose, and it kept rising.

"But then I said, 'If we do take the car, some of us would be sitting on one another's laps.' And the state troopers were talking about making arrests."

Poor people didn't have means to evacuate. It's that simple. And I don't care if it was racism or classism that defined the lack of resources allocated to these people, or even whether the discrimination was intentional. It was real, and someone ought to be held accountable for this mess.