Part 2 of a two-part series
ALONG THE COLOR LINE — JANUARY 2006
Recoiling from the terrible undeniably racist specter of recent events in New Orleans – the thousands of African Americans left dead or homeless, and hundreds of blacks attempting to flee their flooded city turned around at gunpoint at one bridge – the black national establishment went into action. Hundreds of black civic, religious and labor groups donated funds, food and clothing. Many opened their homes to Katrina’s black victims.
On November 2, 2005, all 42 members of the Congressional Black Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced H.R. 4197, the “Hurricane Katrina Recovery, Reclamation, Restoration and Reunion Act of 2005.” The bill called for the creation of a “victim restoration fund;” “environmental protection for all Katrina victims;” “the protection of voting rights of Hurricane Katrina victims;” “educational assistance from early childcare and Headstart, through elementary and secondary education, and including assistance for colleges and university students, faculty and facilities;” and “the rebuilding of hospitals, [and] an elimination of health care disparities between racial and ethnic minorities” and white Americans. The legislative initiative was immediately endorsed by the NAACP. Although created in a “race neutral” language, H.R. 4197 was clearly an attempted to develop a national African-American legislative response to the crisis.
A prominent black political scientist, University of Pennsylvania professor Adolph L. Reed, Jr., then pushed the Katrina debate in an unexpected direction. In the November, 2005 issue of the Progressive magazine, Reed condemned liberals for drawing attention to the issue of racism around New Orleans’s devastation. “Many liberals gravitate to the language of racism not simply because it makes them feel righteous but also because it doesn’t carry any political warrant beyond exhorting people not to be racist. In fact, it often is exactly the opposite of a call to action.” Reed feared that the charge of racism “implies most whites can’t be expected to align with them around common political goals.”
A native of New Orleans, Reed angrily condemned the Bush administration’s “flagrant” actions. But Reed forcefully insisted that what was happening in his home city was predominantly a dynamic of class, not race. Class “was certainly a better predictor than race of who evacuated the city before the hurricane, who was able to survive the storm itself, who was warehoused in the Superdome or convention center or stuck without food and water on the parched overpasses. . . .” Then Reed drew what for many seemed an extremist conclusion: “As a political strategy, exposing racism is wrong-headed and at best an utter waste of time. . . . Because the category [of racism] is so porous, it doesn’t really explain anything. Indeed it is an alternative to an explanation.”
Does Reed’s argument make sense? Certainly from a strategic perspective, in the context of how the U.S. political economy functions, the class question is fundamental. Net wealth, and access to material resources, drives America’s political system and its economy. The lack of home ownership, high rates of joblessness and lower median incomes of black families reproduce structural inequality.
But because of America’s deeply racist heritage, class and race are inextricably intertwined in countless ways. The unequal outcomes that African Americans experience in their daily lives, and the terrible tragedies the world bore witness to in New Orleans, were profoundly racial. The overwhelming majority of white Americans, regardless of their social class, Republicans and Democrats alike, steadfastly refused to accept the continuing burden of racial inequality.
One blatant example generated by the New Orleans crisis can illustrate this. On December 20, 2005, the National Fair Housing Alliance, a coalition of 220 civil rights and non-profit fair housing organizations, released a comprehensive study documenting its investigation of unequal racial treatment of black vs. white Katrina victims in their attempts to secure temporary housing. The Alliance conducted telephone tests with black and white home seekers requesting information about unit availability, rents, and other conditions of housing leasing. In 66 percent of the tests whites were distinctly favored over African Americans.
In numerous cases, white Katrina evacuees received free months’ rent, discounts, and even color televisions, for signing rental agreements. Landlords refused to inform blacks about available apartments; others failed to return African Americans’ telephone messages; and others quoted significantly higher rents and demanded exorbitant security deposits, which white testers did not have to pay. In Birmingham, one white tester was informed that a $150 security deposit and an application fee of $25 per adult “would be waived” because of his or her status as a Hurricane Katrina victim. The same Birmingham firm told a black tester that he had to come up with the $150 deposit, plus $25 per applicant, and provide evidence that his earnings were at least three times the monthly rent.
Already, New Orleans is experiencing an unprecedented real estate boom, as the price for housing in areas undamaged by the flood has skyrocketed. Developers are planning a “New New Orleans” with a population of only 275,000, with the vast majority of native African Americans permanently removed from the city. Race, not class, is central to this racist strategy of gentrification. The elimination of hundreds of thousands of African American voters potentially could shift Louisiana’s politics ever further to the right.
That is why African Americans, and our white liberal and progressive allies, must demand the right of effective return and resettlement of all black evacuees. Unless this occurs, the Katrina tragedy will continue to reinforce racial and class oppression for decades to come.
