I watched the slow-moving horror manifest and metastasize from my vantage in Omaha, glued to the television and my phone for days, watching in abject disbelief, at what seemed to me a failure to respond appropriately-at our federal, state and local levels-to the emergency unfolding. Hurricane Katrina and the breach of the levees, that were supposed to protect New Orleans, happened just after I moved back to Nebraska. This photo reminds me that divide was deepened and etched in strong relief during Hurricane Katrina. It has also been indelibly marked by a stark economic/racial divide, part of its Southern American legacy that persists into the 21st Century. New Orleans has long been a beautiful, magical, joyous, esoteric American city with a wonderfully diverse population. Many people aren’t able to leave the city, and many choose to ride out the storms that occasionally assail the place, fingers crossed. Tens of thousands of vehicles headed west and north in search of safety can be daunting, if not logistically impossible, and the only place I finally found a place to stay was in northeast Texas. A voluntary or mandatory evacuation from a metropolitan area the size of New Orleans is no small feat. Only once was the threat from a hurricane so dire that I left the city seeking shelter elsewhere. “Although I’m a native Nebraskan, I lived in New Orleans for many years and experienced a number of hurricanes and even some flooding while I lived there. Taken in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the photo shows New Orleans residents sending out a plea for help from the roof of an apartment complex. Pool of “The Dallas Morning News” on September 1, 2005. But amid images of black looters, some sympathy threatens to give way to anger and disdain.Pulitzer Prize-winning image photographed by Smiley N. No one questions that whites have been moved by the suffering of blacks, and vice versa. "And I don't expect that feeling to go away anytime soon." "Black people are mad because they feel the reason for the slow response is because those people are black and they didn't support George Bush," said Ron Walters, a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland. In conversations at restaurants, homes, offices, on talk radio and online, it's clear that many blacks and whites view the effects of Katrina differently.Īlthough no group is monolithic in opinion or emotion, many blacks are outraged that so many of their own were left behind in New Orleans with no evacuation plan and no urgent effort to rescue them.
Nobody wants to see any American suffer." But people are doing what they can for Americans. "The African-American community has obviously been very heavily affected. "That Americans would somehow in a color-affected way decide who to help and who not to help, I, I just don't believe it," she said. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the most prominent black person in the Bush administration, downplayed the criticism. These are American citizens," Watson said. "'Refugee' calls up to mind people that come from different lands and have to be taken care of.
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