Discrimination At It's Finest!

In the book White Like Me, the author Tim Wise brings up the topic of discrimination during hurricane Katrina in 2009. On August 29, 2005, hurricane Katrina was one of the most deadliest and destructive tropical storms that ever hit America. Facts have shown that hurricane Katrina was recorded to be sixth strongest hurricane to ever hit the Atlantic coast. There were about 1,833 people who died in the hurricane and floods. Many residents of New Orleans were unable to evacuate the city before the hurricane. During hurricane Katrina there were many people stranded on rooftops throughout the city and living for days in the Astrodome. The living conditions were terrible for the people stranded in New Orleans.

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans poor blacks and other minorities were hit the most because they did not own cars or have any type of money to leave the city.  Also many people did not know how severe Hurricane Katrina was going to hit the city, so people decided to stay and most of them lost their lives.  People were looting from stores and the media had a field day in replaying the same exact footage of African Americans looting a store from different angles just to show the rest of the country that black people are nothing, but violent savages. In the text Wise states, "They also showed us endless footage of looters, though it was often the same footage or six incidents shown from different angles, giving the impression to a public already inclined to think the worst of lower-income black folks that theft was more common than it really was. (218)" Blacks were then targeted by being called sub-human scum, vermin, slime, and referred to as animals.

The African Americans in New Orleans were disproportionately poor. It is the result of centuries of concerted decision-making by political actors at the local, state, and national levels, which leads all the way back to the days of slavery and continuing up to our current political moment. Classism played certain role in during the hurricane. All of the impoverished areas of the city were flooded and destroyed.  The wealthiest districts weren't even flooded as bad or flooded at all. I believe if elite whites would have lived in those areas deemed as impoverished in New Orleans the government would have fixed the levees and protected them in any disaster.  But because it was poor minorities living in this particular space they just didn't care. I strongly believe that it wasn't any accident that certain neighborhoods in New Orleans suffered the most damaged from the flooding.