Events the scale of Katrina and its aftermath stretch the bounds of cognitive thinking so I’m turning to metaphysics to make sense of what’s happening. There are two Americas which exist in the same physical space, but which have only brief spatial and temporal overlaps. Katrina has opened a door and is letting one America see other other.
One America is rich and white, the other is poor and, for the most part, brown and black. Rich America, with computer models and meteorologists have been predicting for years that a category four or five hurricane could cause devastation on the low-lying coast of the Gulf of Mexico, but rich America didn’t get rich by listening to dire predictions about the climate, so developers were allowed to drain wetlands that protect the coast.
Hurricane Katrina was powerful but polite storm. Coming across southern Florida, Katrina gave people there a small taste of her power and gave the federal government plenty of warning about what would happen when it moved west. I remember looking at satellite photos two Saturdays ago and was shocked to see Katrina covered one-half of the Gulf of Mexico.
That Sunday, a friend called to talk about the storm. “New Orleans is going to get hit,” he said and reported on folks he knew trying to get out of town. Poor America knew this storm was going to be bad.
Rich America apparently knew it, too. In all the hours of CNN watching we’ve done this week, did anyone see rich folks stranded on rooftops or fetched up at the Superdome with no food, water or sanitation? Everyone knew, but only some people got away.
George Bush, whose administration serves rich America, must have thought everything was OK, because all the folks he knew were high and dry. No one in his administration thought to send in buses or that National Guard to get the poor folks out of New Orleans because the Bush administration doesn’t know the poor exist and, for political purposes, they don’t.
When Mr. Bush finally showed up on the gulf, he spoke of getting Senator Trent Lott’s (R-MS) house rebuilt and praised clueless FEMA Director Michael Brown for doing “a heck of a job.”
On National Public Radio, author John Barry noted that then-Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover was quicker to bring aid with boats to victims of the 1927 Mississippi River flood than Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff was with helicopters and airplanes in 2005 and this after four years of “intensive effort” to prepare the nation for attack or disaster.
The death toll from Katrina will be in the thousands, almost all poor African American citizens. How much money did the federal government spend this year trying to keep one brain-dead white woman attached to a feeding tube? The same federal government let thousands of African Americans die, their desecrated bodies left to swell with toxic water or bloat in Louisiana’s late summer sun. Vital communities have been wiped away, generations of Americans with so much to contribute have been scattered and commentators drone about how this might – might – make it harder for Mr. Bush to repeal the estate tax on the very rich.
It’s sad to report, but American history is – and is still – a story about racism. Because we’ve operated on the “two America” principle for so long, we’ve used Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama as waste dumps, places to send nasty things like toxic waste and cancer-causing corporate chemistry when we want them to go “away.” Now, those toxic time bombs are exploding. First responders are reporting chemical burns from wading through floodwater and soon more poor people will killed and injured by exposure to the same brew. On Fox News, Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control said to get rid of the toxic water, we should pump it into the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain. That’s the answer; just send it “away” again.
There are other ways of finding two Americas. One America is opening hearts and homes and wallets to bring relief to the refugees of this avoidable disaster; too bad those same people can’t seem to elect a government that will represent the same values.
Two Americas
Events the scale of Katrina and its aftermath stretch the bounds of cognitive thinking so I’m turning to metaphysics to make sense of what’s happening. There are two Americas which exist in the same physical space, but which have only brief spatial and temporal overlaps. Katrina has opened a door and is letting one America see other other.
One America is rich and white, the other is poor and, for the most part, brown and black. Rich America, with computer models and meteorologists have been predicting for years that a category four or five hurricane could cause devastation on the low-lying coast of the Gulf of Mexico, but rich America didn’t get rich by listening to dire predictions about the climate, so developers were allowed to drain wetlands that protect the coast.
Hurricane Katrina was powerful but polite storm. Coming across southern Florida, Katrina gave people there a small taste of her power and gave the federal government plenty of warning about what would happen when it moved west. I remember looking at satellite photos two Saturdays ago and was shocked to see Katrina covered one-half of the Gulf of Mexico.
That Sunday, a friend called to talk about the storm. “New Orleans is going to get hit,” he said and reported on folks he knew trying to get out of town. Poor America knew this storm was going to be bad.
Rich America apparently knew it, too. In all the hours of CNN watching we’ve done this week, did anyone see rich folks stranded on rooftops or fetched up at the Superdome with no food, water or sanitation? Everyone knew, but only some people got away.
George Bush, whose administration serves rich America, must have thought everything was OK, because all the folks he knew were high and dry. No one in his administration thought to send in buses or that National Guard to get the poor folks out of New Orleans because the Bush administration doesn’t know the poor exist and, for political purposes, they don’t.
When Mr. Bush finally showed up on the gulf, he spoke of getting Senator Trent Lott’s (R-MS) house rebuilt and praised clueless FEMA Director Michael Brown for doing “a heck of a job.”
On National Public Radio, author John Barry noted that then-Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover was quicker to bring aid with boats to victims of the 1927 Mississippi River flood than Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff was with helicopters and airplanes in 2005 and this after four years of “intensive effort” to prepare the nation for attack or disaster.
The death toll from Katrina will be in the thousands, almost all poor African American citizens. How much money did the federal government spend this year trying to keep one brain-dead white woman attached to a feeding tube? The same federal government let thousands of African Americans die, their desecrated bodies left to swell with toxic water or bloat in Louisiana’s late summer sun. Vital communities have been wiped away, generations of Americans with so much to contribute have been scattered and commentators drone about how this might – might – make it harder for Mr. Bush to repeal the estate tax on the very rich.
It’s sad to report, but American history is – and is still – a story about racism. Because we’ve operated on the “two America” principle for so long, we’ve used Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama as waste dumps, places to send nasty things like toxic waste and cancer-causing corporate chemistry when we want them to go “away.” Now, those toxic time bombs are exploding. First responders are reporting chemical burns from wading through floodwater and soon more poor people will killed and injured by exposure to the same brew. On Fox News, Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control said to get rid of the toxic water, we should pump it into the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain. That’s the answer; just send it “away” again.
There are other ways of finding two Americas. One America is opening hearts and homes and wallets to bring relief to the refugees of this avoidable disaster; too bad those same people can’t seem to elect a government that will represent the same values.
© Mark Floegel, 2005