Am I the only one who noticed that within hours – hours! – survivors of that string of tornadoes that brought death and destruction in their wake in Central Florida saw the US government swing into action? People may be receiving relief checks as soon as Tuesday.
And back in New Orleans…..
On television and in newspapers the faces of Central Florida have been White, except for some of the prisoners (we used to call them “chain gang”) out there working on debris clearance. The faces of New Orleans have been Black. Even now, Black people are asking for help in rebuilding their lives and their New Orleans, as they did last week when US senators toured the Lower 9th Ward to see for themselves how destructive Hurricane Katrina was and how inadequate government response has been. Duh! What’s taken so long?
“Whatever response is needed, we will make it quick and sure,” President Bush said in a speech over the weekend, even as relief was already on the ground in Florida, where his brother Jeb, the most recent former governor, is still a wielder of clout.
Granted, New Orleanians may be too much dependent upon government to jump start their hearts while the attitude expressed after the tornadoes in Central Florida was, according to CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, “We don’t need FEMA; we have Floridians.”
But if one can say that the response to the tornadoes reflects lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina, then those lessons should be applied forthwith to -- and within -- New Orleans.
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2 comments:
That's a tough one.
Certainly, the response to the plights of New Orleaneans (sp?) has been woefully inadequate, but it also reminds me of the response to Floridians who suffered hurricane after hurricane a year or two before Katrina.
As of 2006, many of these people (many Black, as far as I know) were still waiting on aid that might never come - especially from insurance policies they've paid on for years.
It's hard NOT to think that race or at least class was a factor - especially now that these New Orleaneans and those Floridians are no longer the media darlings they once were.
Whilerace was definetly a factor I believe that class was even more so. Here in New Orleans we are a majority black city, any statistics are going to come up predominantly black as well. The 9th Ward was also home to a lot of poor whites and the largest Honduran population outside of Honduras.
The real difference is that our disaster was man made, not natural. It was the failure of the Federally built levees that left 80% of my city submergered for weeks on end.
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