September 8, 2005
Katrina bares racial gulf; experts see little change

By Alan Elsner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The gaping racial divide in the United States was
laid bare by Hurricane Katrina, but many social policy experts say the
disaster is unlikely to prompt any sustained effort to combat black
urban poverty.

September 8, 2005
Katrina bares racial gulf; experts see little change

By Alan Elsner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The gaping racial divide in the United States was
laid bare by Hurricane Katrina, but many social policy experts say the
disaster is unlikely to prompt any sustained effort to combat black urban
poverty.
<snip>
In New Orleans, blacks have run the city government for most of the past
three decades. During their tenure, Hutchinson said, the French Quarter,
casinos and tourism have boomed and businesses have done well but the poor
have languished.

Swain believes things could get even worse for many of those forced to
flee to cities where they will compete with other poor people, including
millions of Hispanic immigrants, legal and illegal, for scarce jobs.

"This increased competition will certainly increase the ethnic and racial
tensions that characterize the many parts of the country where blacks and
Hispanics compete for the same limited resources," she said.

Copyright =A9 2005 Reuters
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=3D/2005/9/8/worldupdates/2005-0=

September 8, 2005
Katrina bares racial gulf; experts see little change

By Alan Elsner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The gaping racial divide in the United States was
laid bare by Hurricane Katrina, but many social policy experts say the
disaster is unlikely to prompt any sustained effort to combat black urban
poverty.

In the chaotic aftermath of the hurricane that destroyed New Orleans it
became obvious that the overwhelming majority of people trapped in the
drowned city, waiting desperately for help or succumbing to the storm,
were poor blacks.

"It was pretty stark looking at the pictures and the data. Black people in
New Orleans and elsewhere live together in the most fragile neighborhoods
and it's not an accident -- it's the result of decades of segregation and
discrimination," said Myron Orfield, a law professor at the University of
Minnesota and former state legislator.

Some see the tragedy as the latest manifestation of America's "original
sin" -- its treatment of the descendants of the millions of Africans
brought here as slaves.

That legacy is reflected in a thousand different ways. For example: in
1998, the average life expectancy at birth was 71.3 years for blacks and
77.3 years for whites. Infant mortality for blacks was more than double
the white rate.

A report in June for the Alternative Schools Network found that in 2002
one in every four black men in the United States was permanently
unemployed, a rate double that of white men and 70 percent higher than
among Asian and Hispanic men. In the course of their lives, black males
have a one in three chance of spending time behind bars.

Blacks are routinely charged higher interest rates than whites for
mortgages and car loans. A recent Vanderbilt University study found black
customers paid an additional $972 over the life of an auto loan.

In New Orleans, a city that was more than two-thirds black, over 30
percent of the population lived below the poverty level. When it came time
to evacuate, hundreds of thousands of blacks had no cars and could not
leave.

The tragedy, said Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, showed "how little
inner-city African Americans have to fall back on. They could not load up
their families in a van, fill it up with $100 of gasoline, throw some
bottled water in the back and check into a hotel with a credit card.

'PASSIVE INDIFFERENCE'

"I see no evidence of active malice, but I see a continuation of passive
indifference on the part of our government toward the least of these,"
Obama said on the floor of the Senate on Tuesday.

A similar thing happened when Hurricane Andrew struck Florida in 1992,
according to University of North Texas sociologist Nicole Dash, who
studied that storm's aftermath.

"The more African Americans lived on a block, the fewer had insurance, or
were insured by large companies able to pay out," she said. "Was it race
or was it class? Unfortunately, in the United States, the two often go
together."

Andrew did cause a political storm, but after it abated the poor went back
to being invisible.

"Black poverty has persisted and become intractable but unless we have
some crisis like this, we basically forget about these people -- out of
sight, out of mind," said Cornell University historian Robert Harris.

Carol Swain, a law professor at Vanderbilt University, looks at the
problem through the prism of her own life. One of 12 children of alcoholic
and abusive parents, she said her 11 brothers and sisters were still mired
in poverty. The social and educational programs that gave her the
opportunity to escape have been slashed or no longer exist.

Author and analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson saw no reason to believe anything
would change as a result of Katrina.

"Our leaders, state, local and federal, have pursued policies that do not
just ignore the plight of the poor but compound it," he said.

In New Orleans, blacks have run the city government for most of the past
three decades. During their tenure, Hutchinson said, the French Quarter,
casinos and tourism have boomed and businesses have done well but the poor
have languished.

Swain believes things could get even worse for many of those forced to
flee to cities where they will compete with other poor people, including
millions of Hispanic immigrants, legal and illegal, for scarce jobs.

"This increased competition will certainly increase the ethnic and racial
tensions that characterize the many parts of the country where blacks and
Hispanics compete for the same limited resources," she said.




Copyright © 2005 Reuters
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2005/9/8/worldupdates/2005-09-08T004542Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_-215373-1&sec=worldupdates