One Year Later Katrina Didn't Close the Racial Divide

A few months ago New Orleans Mayor Ron Nagin effusively praised the Bush administration for stepping up efforts to aid the city’s recovery. Now he’s singing a different tune, saying that the government has bombed badly. And he blames it on one thing, racism. The mayor’s compliments and bitter blast tells much about what Katrina did and didn’t do to close the racial divide.

But that’s not the only sign that the divide is still gaping. A month before Nagin’s outburst, the feds announced that they’d investigate the horrific incident where police in the white-flight New Orleans suburb of Gretna turned back at gunpoint hundreds of desperate, panic stricken, mostly poor blacks attempting to flee Katrina’s devastation. Gretna officials wailed that race was not the motive. They claimed that that they didn’t have the resources to deal with the crowds. That’s malarkey, and their words in the first hours after Katrina hit prove it.

They lambasted the flood victims as criminals and claimed they threatened life and property. These are well-worn racial code words. Though there was absolutely no evidence of any wrongdoing by the overwhelming majority of the victims, police and officials equated black with criminal. If those fleeing in headlong frenzy for their lives were white, and middle class, city officials would likely have embraced them with open arms and bent over backwards to provide whatever food and shelter they could.

While the federal investigation is welcome, it took way too long. State and federal officials should have immediately put city officials on the legal hot seat for their disgraceful action. But despite repeated demands by civil rights groups and two protest marches by national civil rights leaders, the Louisiana attorney general took months to investigate. And despite an ACLU demand, it has refused to make its findings public. Given the glacial pace of most federal civil rights probes, Katrina will be a faint memory by the time the Feds finish. The likelihood of any action is probably nil.

The first tip that race would constantly shadow the Katrina debacle was the wide gulf in black and white reaction to Bush and the government’s initial fumbled relief efforts. In polls most blacks relentlessly hammered Bush as mean-spirited and callous for his foot-dragging. The conspiracy mill churned furiously. Many blacks publicly, and even more privately, groused that there was a hidden racial hand in the turgid response. Many cheered hip-hop artist Kanye West’s verbal lash of Bush that he hates black people. Most whites criticized the sluggish federal response, but attributed it to bureaucratic bungling, not racial malice.

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