europeus

There has been a great deal of discussion about whether racism was the force behind the unacceptable response. The Bush administration denied such accusations. However, the African American community strongly believes the reason people were left behind after the disaster is the color of their skin. Craig Flournoy, an assistant professor at SMU, whose research interests include media coverage of minorities and social movements, said the slow response was “absolutely race-related.” Flournoy argued the situation fits in the context of American history. “The history of this country is that when you have black people together, they always get screwed.” He added that people were not made slaves because they were poor but based on the color of their skin. Nonetheless, others do not think racism was the main reason for the slow response. French journalist and author Daniel Riot blamed the inefficiency of the U.S. bureaucracy. He pointed out three problems emphasized by the crisis: the “crisis management,” the “democratic reflex,” and the “sin of pride.”

Once again, the wrong philosophy was adopted to handle the crisis, and the main worries were the economy rather than the people, the price of gas rather than the homeless. The “democratic reflex” Riot referred to has to do with the time wasted to solicit national help. “It is incredible there was a selective sorting out of the humanitarian help,” he said. The third problem emphasized by the crisis, according to Riot, is the “sin of pride,” which led the figures in charge to wait several days before asking for help they were going to be granted. It is indeed surprising and terrifying at the same time to observe how the most powerful country in the world is incapable of anticipating a natural catastrophe. Riot said the crisis should act as a magnificent lesson of humility not only for the United States but for all the countries worldwide. Because Katrina’s consequences have revealed a greater safety concern than a humanitarian concern, violence grew wild. About 58,000 National Guard troops were mobilized as if the target were the looters. People in the United States and around the world witnessed a terrible lack of civil protection.

Charles Taylor, a law and philosophy professor at Northwestern University in Chicago, who previously taught political science and philosophy at McGill University in Montreal, is known for his views on security versus safety. Taylor has argued that in the possessive individualist mass society, one cultivates security reflexes but not safety reasoning (www.cnaf.fr). In situations of crisis, the real priority should be safety as well as the desire to survive together, not everyone for himself. Because of the way this society allows practically anyone to carry a weapon, many scenes of shocking violence emerged after Katrina’s devastation. What triggered violence was obviously the people’s hopeless situation, in which tens of thousands people lost everything. A desperate person with a gun in his hand is more likely to commit an act of violence than someone in a “normal” situation. But violence is at the roots of this society. According to the National Rifle Association’s Web site (www.nra.com), it is scarily simple to own a gun. An individual 21 years of age or older may buy a handgun, and an individual 18 years of age or older may purchase a rifle or shotgun. Such people are ineligible to possess firearms or ammunition if they have been convicted of crimes punishable by imprisonment for over one year; if they are fugitives from justice; if they are illegal aliens; and if they have been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. In other words, any normal adult can possess a gun. Having been born and raised in France, I get the chills from such information.

In my country (France), there is violence. But a person who wants to acquire a gun must be over 21 years old and needs a special permit. Plus, the majority of the people in France do not want to own firearms for self-defense. When driving a car in France and making unpleasant gestures at other drivers, an individual is less likely to be shot at than in the United States. The “insulted” persons, though, will surely respond with very vulgar language. Is the American society fragile enough that people so easily adopt anarchic rules when law and order temporarily cannot be enforced?

What Katrina has drastically unveiled is the country’s still profound race and class crisis. The people who survived the disaster were forced to live in conditions similar to those of third world countries. Television audiences were in fact witnessing wartime conditions that no one would have thought could occur on American soil. “It is among the worst calamities in the last 50 years in this country,” Flournoy said. For the past 30 years, the media in the United States have paid very little attention to race and class. According to Flournoy, there is probably not one reporter assigned to cover poverty full time around the country. The civil rights movement seems to have been the last time the nation took a serious ongoing look at racial class. Do the most neglected people need to endure tragic or devastating events for the media to pay attention to the issue of poverty in this country? As a reminder, there were 37 million poor people in 2004, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (“Poverty: 2004 Highlights”). Other frightening figures suggest the poverty rates for African American remained the highest and unchanged since 2003 (24.7 percent). Census Bureau officials held a news conference on income and poverty in the United States last August. Chuck Nelson, assistant division chief, Housing and Household Economic Statistics, stated, “[2005] is the fourth consecutive year in which the nation’s poverty rate has increased.”

Yet, poverty is still not covered as it should be by the media. On Sept. 11, 2005, New York Times Byron Calame wrote, “Given the dimensions of poverty in New Orleans and the city’s dependence on a levee system, The Times’ news coverage of these problems over the past decade falls far short of what its readers have a right to expect from a national newspaper.” As a result, Katrina has not only opened the issue of poverty; it has also showed the weaknesses of reporting in the media. Have journalists forgotten their job is about comforting the affected and afflicting the comfortable? National media outlets live in a world so completely removed from the underclass, they tend to forget it exists, according to an article on National Journal.com posted on Sept. 9, 2005. Katrina placed poor people at the center of a humanly significant story. The one positive aspect of the tragedy is it forced journalists to finally cover the issue of poverty in-depth and on a continuous basis. The question is now: will journalists continue to do so?

Pauline Forté is journalist