14. Fail to Enforce Fair Housing Laws.
15. No Commitment to Rebuild and Replace Low-Income Public Housing.
16. Downplay the Black Cultural Heritage of New Orleans.
17. Treatment of Mixed-Income "Integrated" Housing as Superior to All-Black Neighborhoods.
18. Allow "Oversight" (Overseer) Board to Manage Katrina Funds That Flow to New Orleans.
19. Delay Rebuilding and Construction of New Orleans Schools.
20. Hold Elections without Appropriate Voting Rights Act Safeguards.
It is important to remember the twenty points were compiled at a time when the vast majority of New Orleanians were scattered to the four winds and powerless to reverse depopulation, political disenfranchisement, unfair housing, inequitable recovery and discriminatory rebuilding policies that were already underway. Many of these trends were later detailed in two of my books: Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina: Struggles to Reclaim, Rebuild, and Revitalize New Orleans and the Gulf Coast (Westview Press 2009) and The Wrong Complexion for Protection: How the Government Response to Disaster Endangers Africans Communities (NYU Press 2012).
Now after a decade, Katrina watchers, experts, urban planners, funders, government and nongovernment organizations, and community leaders point to some shocking and alarming statistics in Black New Orleans. Ten years of disaster-capitalism and racist housing policies have resulted in some glaring racial gaps, deepened inequalities and entire neighborhoods being left behind --leaving enduring scars in the black community for years to come. New Orleans disaster recovery should be measured by how it treated its most vulnerable population--black children. The city has not been kind to black children over the last decade as demonstrated by rising childhood poverty rate--while poverty for all other groups declined across the nation. New Orleans is bouncing back after Katrina. However, its revival is unequal. Some worrisome trends include: uneven recovery, failed rebuilding program, unchecked disaster profiteers, smaller African American footprint, dismantling of black-middle-class, failure to restore public transit, rising income inequality, escalating financial insecurity, soaring rent prices, holes in social safety net, demolition of public housing , privatizing public hospitals, shortage of low-income housing, residential abandonment and blight, rampant housing discrimination, questionable public school-makeover, loss of black school teachers and teachers with formal teaching credentials, black land grab, displacement and gentrification.
Clearly, the New Orleans "economic renaissance," urban laboratory and "experiments" have had different impacts on the city's white and black population. While these outcomes and trends are alarming, they should be no surprise given the decade-long policies built on racial inequality that preceded the 2005 storm. If a city rebuilds on inequality, you can expect more not less inequality. Clearly, life is much better for post-Katrina White New Orleans than it is for Black New Orleans. This was true before the flood. What makes these disparities so sad and so hard to comprehend is the racial gap on a number of important social and economic indicators actually widened largely with $71 billion federal disaster funding--government subsidized inequality. Again, the impetus for many of these racial disparities grew out of policies adopted and or advocated for a few months after the levees breached. Those of us who pointed out these disturbing trends a decade ago were accused of being alarmist and "playing the race card." The results are now in for the world to see and judge. And the reality (unlike the rhetoric) is not pretty.
(Article changed on August 25, 2015 at 19:57)
(Article changed on August 27, 2015 at 13:16)
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
1
