Invisibility Kills
The infrastructural consequences of Katrina were understood well ahead of time. Municipal emergency response procedures document this fact. Unfunded 2004-2005 New Orleans Corps of Engineers plans for the levees document this fact. Homeland security plans and drills document this fact. Why even a recent made for television mockumentary documents the consequences of a category 4 or 5 hurricane strike on the Gulf Coast to our energy economy. What took America by surprise were the unintended social consequences of a wholly predictable disaster intersecting a previously ignored and effectively invisible populace.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
30% of New Orleans residents were living without transportation and 40% were living below the poverty line. Did the city of New Orleans or any of its millions of visitors not notice this fact? Can any level of American governance - municipal, state, or federal, or, any level of social organization - racial, political, religious, and familial - plausibly deny that long time before Katrina ravaged the Gulf Cost, within our midst, we have a large and growing population of American refugees? Katrina forced us - along with the rest of the world - to abruptly come to grips with the shamefully ignored reality of the American refugee.
Media Coverage
Recriminations are flying fast and furious about biased media coverage of the natural and human consequences of Katrina. I say nonsense. This is standard American media coverage. Racial stigmatization, careful news selection and omission, distortion of complex and multifaceted situations - are all established media best practices. We have been inundated for so long by the hard rain of biased media representation that these standards are imprinted on our collective unconscious. The media has taught us what and how to think and feel. Having grown accustomed to doing the better part of relating to people via media's representations - the shock to our system comes from the sudden visibility conferred to previously invisible American refugees
For weeks now we'll be busy trying to process and reconcile this "new reality". We're already well along with the process of picking sides, laying blame, and drawing conclusions consistent with our preferred belief about how the world works. One such hardening perspective from a young black man really caught my attention;
While good God-fearing Black people were stuck on their rooftops, the rescue crew could not get to them because elsewhere in the city, dumb and lawless Black folk were preventing them from getting help because resources had to be diverted to bring the looters to heel.
The Blacklash. This could potentially set race-relations back 150 years or so. Rape, lawlessness, violence, disease, suicides, and general stupidity. White people across the country are turning on the TV and saying, "Typical nigger shit."
The Economic lessons learned. This is why more Black people should have saving accounts, with money in them. The only thing I would have looted is my savings account.
Black Social Economy or Am I My Brother's Keeper
These remarks underscore the impoverished state of a once wealthy people. This young brother literally cannot see he's talking about poor relatives that nobody's willing to claim. Katrina is only the first of still bigger storms coming our way. If we are to minimize additional unintended consequences, it is imperative that we begin doing everything in our power to recover and accumulate the social capital we've squandered over the past 30 years. Not only is this a goal easily within our reach, it is an effort that nobody else can undertake on our behalf.
If a drop of rain falls here in the heartland, my mother-in-law will call from Connecticut to ask if we're getting wet. Though dispersed from New England down to the Panhandle and out west as far as New Mexico, my wife's family stays in remarkably close touch with one another. If a blip appears in a family member's forecast, mothers, sisters, cousins, nieces and aunts light up the phones. As you can imagine, the lines were on fire for a few days and didn't cool off until after Katrina bypassed the Florida panhandle.
In her family, out of sight is not allowed to degenerate to out of mind. As much as some individuals have struggled to become refugees, no invisibility is allowed. As an only child raised by older parents, whose ties with their own extended families succumbed to geography, apathy, and death - I deeply appreciate the immense social wealth I've married into. Though my parents weren't adept on the extended family front, they understood the imperative of social capital. Substituting business, neighborhood, church, and identity bonds for blood bonds - they managed to form and maintain a powerful "savings" portfolio. Call me sentimental, but I believe the brother and sister salutations from back in my day were valuable coin. The central lesson of Katrina, if we're wise enough to take it, is that decent people don't deny the many invisible refugees in our midst.
As we all tortiously and systematically apportion blame for the massive societal failings made evident in the wake of hurricane Katrina, let's please not forget the hemorraghing of black social capital over the past 40 years resulting in the usually invisible status of the American Refugee's whom we've Left Behind.
co-signed with collateral.
Posted by: memer at September 7, 2005 02:57 PM