Wow, David Brooks goes lefty on us today. I fielded some disagreement before when I mentioned that there might be progressive, nonracist reasons for the concept of a black underclass. Certainly the rise of black middle-class and the existence of rural, largely white poor and the working poor immigrants challenge Great Society-era conceptions of racial bifurcation. But in New Orleans, the situation still applies: almost all of those we’ve seen left behind in the storm are black, poor and politically powerless.
Indeed, of all the moving, excruciating news coverage I’ve seen of the disaster so far, the most affecting (from CBSNews) was a long view of a raised Interstate bridge lined with refugees, every one of them poor and black, one of whom sat next to her husband who had died at her feet because no emergency vehicles passing by over the last day would stop for her. It may well be that resources are strained beyond the stretching point, and that they wouldn’t have anywhere to take the critically ill anyway. But for those on the bridge, the indifference of emergency operations was part and parcel of the indifference of the state and local political elite that historically has ignored them.
Jack Shafer criticizes the media’s silence in face of the obvious class and race dimension of this disaster (and in the process points to a 2002 Times-Picayune article heartbreaking in its prescience). I don’t know how much that matters - viewers will be able to supply some of their own analysis. But what might get lost is what Brooks points out, the civic component, the policy choices that saved some lives and not others.
ADDENDUM: Kieran Healy offers a gloss on the social dimension of disaster.
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