europeus

The consequences of Hurricane Katrina have revealed individual united states as opposed to a unified United States. The absence of an immediate response from the Bush administration led the American people to believe in the philosophy of everyone for himself. Yet in that catastrophic situation, the motto should have been all for one and one for all. The natural disaster has become a parable for this country’s deep, and too often hidden, problems. Jim Hollifield, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said, “What happened in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mississippi exposes the weaknesses in American society. Not everybody is living the American dream.” Hollifield, whose areas of teaching and research include international and comparative political economy, argued that white people benefit from stronger support networks than African Americans. “There is a racial element involved,” he said. “Blacks are unprivileged.” When facing difficult, or in this case, extreme situations, whites have better family support and more money in their families than black people do. As a result, they have somewhere to go, somebody who can help them, which is not true for African Americans. They do not have that network, and consequently rely more on the government’s help. “Blacks are poorer because they are poor socially,” Hollifield said. The government has not acted in a responsible manner because funds meant to reinforce the levees were cut by 80 percent to pay for the war in Iraq instead. Such cuts have occurred despite years of warnings of potential catastrophe. When the Bush administration is unable to respond to a state of emergency, people who get hurt are African-Americans because they are dependent on the help from the government, according to Hollifield.

This was last October. Next door to Hotel Djene, Bamako. 7 pm. The woman who was waiting for me is that kind of person you just cannot forget, partly proud, partly desperate. A kind of militant fighting against absurdity. Proud of her africanity. Desperate because of the poorness of Africa and the consequences it has on its populations. It was the time of Melilla and Ceuta. Of those people trying to climb by force walls separating the South from the North. Northern Africa from Europe. Some people here were shocked to see this human wave running after a dream of prosperity, or simply a way to survive. Aminata met some of them. What they told her was scaring, simply because it says much about the world we are living in: “Say what you want but we prefer to die here rather than going back home and show our parents, friends and neighbours we did not succeed in reaching Europe!, they said. Shame would be on us and we would lost honour.” This story looks far from what the French ambassador in Bamako told me the day before: “There are of course economical reasons that explain why people leave, but there are culturals’ as well. Most of the people trying to reach Europe come from the region of Kai and are members of the ethnos group of the Soninke. Those people made from the travel a tradition. A kind of initiatory rite…”