Hurricane Katrina: Racial bias and classism

Olbermann, Limbaugh, Sharpton and the GOP Mindset

Keith Olbermann just had an extraordinary exchange between himself and Al Sharpton.

The subject was the conditions in New Orleans, looting, and the question of where support is.

Olbermann remarked that he had heard Rush Limbaugh earlier today saying that those that were still in New Orleans deserved what they had gotten, as they had chosen to live there. Olbermann went so far as to call him, "that Limbaugh". Denouncing the inherent inconsiderate nature of such a statement.

But Sharpton made the point that struck me...

Race, Poverty and Katrina

Craig E. Colten, professor of geography and anthropology at Louisiana State University, says race played a role in the New Orleans' level of preparedness for Hurricane Katrina.

Playing The Katrina Race Card

Five
days before Hurricane Katrina struck, 100 persons gathered at a local
Catholic Church in Eastern New Orleans. They were there to talk about
the city’s astronomically high rate of poverty that had increasingly
become a national embarrassment. This was not a gathering of academics,
local and state officials, and business leaders.

Katrina -- Not an Equal Opportunity Destroyer

The blogosphere makes instant social history. You only have to read the Times-Picayune
Blog/Forum to understand first hand the horror that faces those left in
New Orleans in the wake of Katrina. By contrast, when my father filmed
the liberation of the notorious German concentration camp Bergen-Belsen
60 years ago he had to get the film back to the UK for editing.

'To Me, It Just Seems Like Black People Are Marked'

BATON ROUGE, La., Sept. 1 -- It seemed a desperate echo of a
bygone era, a mass of desperate-looking black folk on the run in the
Deep South. Some without shoes.

It was high noon
Thursday at a rest stop on the edge of Baton Rouge when several buses
pulled in, fresh from the calamity of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Not to blame, but.....

I have resisted the overwhelming temptation to immediately react to the unimaginable catastrophe resulting from Hurricane Katrina. It would be easy, too easy in fact, to simply hide behind the thinly veiled disguise of searching for the truth, in order to find someone to blame.

But in this case, President Bush is the overwhelming favorite.

The Right Plays the Race-Card, Randall Robinson Unwittingly Indulges Them

On this blog, veteran civil rights activist Randall Robinson referred
to "reports" of poor New Orleans blacks "eating human corpses to
survive." I haven't seen these reports. I've looked endlessly. They
don't exist. Robinson must either source these "reports" or retract
them immediately because they are profoundly destructive to a cause
he's fought his whole life for.

By raising the specter of cannibalistic blacks, Robinson indulged the racist right's wildest fantasy.

Race and Katrina

Katrina has become a story about race in America. Most affluent and
semi-affluent Americans rarely see poor people -- they live on the
other side of town. The poor of the Deep South, largely black, haven't
been front and center in American consciousness since the 1960s.
Katrina has changed that. Even though it's a painful and rancorous
issue, maybe some good will come out of it (predictable upbeat happy
note). [A minute ago I caught myself on the verge of using the phrase
"well-meaning whites" and had a Dave B. thought: "The Well-Meaning
Whites" would make a great name for a rock band.]

Controversy over New Orleans photos captions

Tuesday, Yahoo! News posted photographs from the Hurricane Katrina disaster area gathered from various sources.

An Associated Press
photograph of two African-American women was captioned, "Looters carry
bags of groceries through floodwaters after taking the merchandise away
from a wind damaged convenience store in New Orleans on Monday, Aug.
29, 2005."

A similar Agence France-Presse (AFP) photograph of two caucasians
was labeled, "Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding
bread and soda from a local grocery store in New Orleans..."

A Nation's Castaways

On TV, we watch them: His braids are flying above his head and
he's got a wild look on his face. He's running, one arm clutching a
load of looted clothes, the other reaching back to tug at his pants,
which are in danger of sliding past his rump. She's crying and forlorn
and too young to be carrying a baby in her arms, but carrying one she
is, and both are dirty and sweaty and hungry, reduced to an animal-like
state of waiting and starving and begging for help. We see them through
our respective prisms of race, and call them "refugees," as if they are
foreigners in their own land.

They are the Other, these victims of Katrina.

Katrina churns ugly questions

New Orleans neighborhoods, once lined with old live oaks, charming
cottages and imposing mansions, had been proof of the ease with which
blacks and whites could live side by side. With the exception, perhaps,
of the toniest areas of St. Charles Avenue and the poorest blocks of
housing projects, black and white homeowners chatted to each other from
their front porches and greeted each other as they walked their dogs
down the streets.

More:

Was race a factor in crisis? Chicago Sun-Times
Amid images of black victims, many ask was race a factor Jamaica Observer
Storm exposes rifts on racial, class lines Denver Post

Via Negrophile:

Katrina response prompts questions of race in U.S.

HOUSTON, Sept 5 (Reuters) - Despite strenuous official
denials, delays in helping victims of Hurricane Katrina have
fed African-American suspicions the government cares more about
the lives of wealthy white people than poor blacks.

In a country where a recent survey indicated many blacks
were probably predisposed to believe the government was out to
get them, many have asked if the race of most of the victims
was a factor in the painfully slow relief effort and the lack
of preparation to prevent the disaster.

They're trying to wash us away

"It's so glaring that the great majority of people crying out for
help are poor, they're black. There's a whole segment of society that's
being left behind." -- John Lewis

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Katrina in black and white

With a killer storm on the way to New Orleans, people with cars left
town. But those without the means had to stay. What we saw were the
poorest of the poor, literally left behind in a city that’s two-thirds
black—a city where white homes generally sit at higher elevations,
while many poor blacks live in areas that flood much more easily. And
now, the discussion is now as much about recovery as equality.

Barbara Bush: Things Working Out 'Very Well' for Poor Evacuees from New Orleans

Accompanying her husband, former President George
H.W.Bush, on a tour of hurricane relief centers in
Houston, Barbara Bush said today, referring to the
poor who had lost everything back home and evacuated,

"This is working very well for them."

SEP 9 , 2005 10:45 AM CDT OPHELIA MOVING - RE-INTENSIFIES - THREAT TO SOUTHEAST U.S.

Satellite Imagery and a Hurricane RECON data just coming in indicates that Ophelia is moving slowly Northeastward, and after weakening overnight to a Tropical storm, has now regained Hurricane Intensity as it moves away from the southerly shear that weakened it overnight. The latest position is near 29.5/78.6W or about 125 miles ESE of Jacksonville and the storm is moving NNE at about kts.

Central pressure has fallen back down to 985mb (it was 991mb overnight), and the Max Flight level wind has increased to near 67KTS (SE Quadrant) or around 65mph sustained surface wind. The thermal eye wall temperature gradient (temperature inside the eye versus outside the eye at the 10,000 ft, or 700mb level) only 3degC, but if the trend towards better organization continues, this thermal gradient will as well. While the RECON has not yet reported a true eyewall, microwave imagery indicates that an improved eyewall structure is currently trying to form. The buoy located at 30.0N/80.6W (about 70NM W-WNW of the storm center) is currently reporting North winds of 26mph with gusts to 33mph, and 11 ft seas, while the buoy located about 70 miles SSE of the storm. now has 38mph sustained winds, and gusts to 49mph, and 14ft seas. It also still has a SST of nearly 84degF, essentially unchanged over the last 5 days, indicating the Gulf Stream has kept the surface water temps totally replenished with warm water from the south. In addition, the buoy just 40 miles SE of Savannah, Georgia is already reporting NNE winds of 28mph, and gusts to 34mph, along with 9 foot swells. The reports from these buoy's confirm the aerial extent of higher winds has expanded, especially in the north through south quadrants of the storm, and that the higher winds speeds from aloft are starting to reach the surface. Ironically, I believe Ophelia is now a 'true' minimal Hurricane -- versus yesterday when it was clearly still a 'borderline' in terms of surface level wind speeds.

The ocean swells that are now reaching the Georgia and Carolina coast line are also going to produce strong and dangerous rip currents. Be advised. The move to a more northerly position, versus the east bias the models have been forecasting for days has resulted in a lessening of shear above Ophelia, which caused significant weakening for the 12 hour period from around 6PM last night, till 6AM this. Indeed, reports overnight from the high level G-IV surveillance of the storm found southerly winds of over 30kts blowing across the top of the storm.

The fact that this did not totally destroy Ophelia attests to the very well developed structure of the storm in the lower levels. While Ophelia is still only moving at 7mph, it is tracking directly over or near the Gulf Stream -- and as long as it does so, significant upwelling of cooler waters from below is really not an issue as the Gulf Stream replenishes the warm oceanic latent heat being removed from the surface water by the storm. The new 12Z model data has a clearly different 'look' to it, with a wide variation in model track forecast after 48hrs. Some of the models still call for the storm to move further away from the coast, but others are now calling for turn westward into the coastline somewhere along the coast from Georgia to the Carolinas. Until additional model data is available, the track and intensity of the storm will remain highly uncertain. All interests along the southeast U.S. should maintain a close vigilance on the storm -- although for now, the threat to Florida still appears to be diminishing.

The models effectively did not catch the slightly greater weakness in the ridge to the north...and this is allowing the storm to take a more northerly drift verses ENE. That said -- the global models continue to show a re-building of the ridge to the north of Ophelia by Sunday and Monday -- which will first slow the storm to a crawl -- and then turn it westward towards the coast early next week. WHERE it will end up is IMPOSSIBLE to predict - as I think I've said for 5 days now(?).

I'll have another update on the storm this afternoon for all Enhanced Service subscribers, with a full update this evening.

Steve WeatherInsite Steve.Gregory@WeatherInsite.com