Katrina: A Pattern or a Ploy
In a short article, written this past August, Jelani Cobb of the New Yorker, pulls together a pattern seen through decades of New Orleans racism. Through cultural references still relevant today the author built an opinion heavy piece compelling to readers. Cobb, a black book author and professor at the University of Connecticut, often writes provocative race related pieces. This piece while well researched is not without considerable evidential flaws. The points made are bold, however the evidence used to hold them together falls short of allowing any real conclusions.
As an ethical appeal Cobb pulls apart the words “natural disaster” when he defines the circumstances as being created by nature, and the disaster as being created by ill-handling of the results. By separating of the words "natural" and "disaster", he tries to persuade the reader that the fallout of the event was created by the white man and had nothing to do with the effects of the scientific upheaval of seismic activity. He backs this concept up with evidence comparing the Haitian and Japanese earthquakes, and states that “it resulted in fifteen times more fatalities.” While these numbers hold true, these two earthquakes were different magnitudes and the dissimilar geographic
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With a sweeping claim that the loss of innocence Katrina left Americans with was seen disproportionately between blacks and whites. Using uncited statistics, Cobb appeals pointedly to the reader’s emotions, and leaves them with self-doubt about their own notions of the response to Katrina. The emotional appeal here is carefully masked with statistics, however, this is a naïve logical argument, since it appeals to the prejudices of the readers rather than as a sober assessment of the
Carnival of Fury taught me that Louisiana's foundations supported injustice by overlooking murder, promoted racial segregation, and condoned the murder of human beings. William Ivy Hair., Carnival of Fury: Robert Charles and the New Orleans
This book will give you an understanding of how structural racism among blacks is installed throughout history. The system is created to make sure the subject matter, blacks, in this case, are subjected to fail. The crack epidemic in a Chicago neighborhood was only the beginning. Since the first day of this course the terms, drugs and crime have been introduced as not only enemies to society but good friends for the government.
Ranikine’s addresses the light upon the failed judicial systems, micro aggressions, pain and agony faced by the black people, white privilege, and all the racial and institutional discrimination as well as the police brutality and injustice against the blacks; The book exposes that, even after the abolition of slavery, how the racism still existed and felt by the colored community in the form of recently emerged ‘Micro aggressions in this modern world’. Claudia Rankine’s Citizen explores the daily life situations between blacks and whites and reveals how little offensive denigrating conversations in the form of micro-aggressions were intentionally conveyed to the black people by the whites and how these racial comments fuel the frustrations and anger among the blacks. She gathered the various incidents, where the black people suffered this pain. This shows the white’s extraordinary powers to oppress the black community and the failure of the legal system Rankine also shares the horrible tragedy of Hurricane Katrina experienced by the black community, where they struggled for their survival before and post the hurricane catastrophes.
William Julius Wilson creates a thrilling new systematic framework to three politically tense social problems: “the plight of low-skilled black males, the persistence of the inner-city ghetto, and the fragmentation of the African American family” (Wilson, 36). Though the conversation of racial inequality is classically divided. Wilson challenges the relationship between institutional and cultural factors as reasons of the racial forces, which are inseparably linked, but public policy can only change the racial status quo by reforming the institutions that support it.
Drea Knufken’s thesis statement is that “As a society, we’ve acquired an immunity to crisis” (510-512). This means that humans in general, or citizens of the world, have become completely desensitized to disasters, we think of them as just another headline, without any understanding of their impact upon fellow
Based on the title of the book alone, it is easy to say that racism is one of the many social issues this book will address. Unlike the normal racism of Caucasians versus African Americans, this book focuses on racism of the black elite versus African Americans, also known as colorism. Colorism is the discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically by others of the same racial group. Margo Jefferson says, “Negroland is my name for a small region of Negro America where residents were sheltered by a certain amount of privilege and plenty” (p. 1).
Although an effort is made in connecting with the blacks, the idea behind it is not in understanding the blacks and their culture but rather is an exploitative one. It had an adverse impact on the black community by degrading their esteem and status in the community. For many years, the political process also had been influenced by the same ideas and had ignored the black population in the political process (Belk, 1990). America loves appropriating black culture — even when black people themselves, at times, don’t receive much love from America.
Most of the destructions from the events of August 29th 2005, when Katrina Hit the City Of New Orleans, were not only caused by the storm itself; but also, by failure of the engineering of the levee system protecting the entire infrastructure of the city. The years of poor decision making and avoidance of the levee system led to one of the most catastrophic events in the history of the United States. Throughout our research, we have identified three key players in charge of the levee system design, construction and maintenance. These three organizations are the Unites States Corps of Engineers, the New Orleans Levee District and the Louisiana Department of Transportation. The consequences of the hurricane showed the organizations negligence in the design, construction and maintenance of the protective walls. Later independent sresearch showed that more than 50 levees and food walls failed during the passage of the hurricane. This failure caused the flooding of most of New Orleans and all of ST. Bernard Parish. The Unites States Corps of Engineers had been in charge of the of the levee system and flood walls construction since the 1936 flood act. According to the law, the Louisiana Department of Transportation is in charge to inspect the overall design and engineering practices implemented in the construction of the system. Once the levee systems were finished, they were handed over to the New Orleans Levee District for regular maintenance and periodically inspections. The uncoordinated actions of these three agencies resulted in the complete failure of a system that was supposed to protect the people of New Orleans. The evidence is clear that this catastrophic event did not happened by chance. The uncoordinated response of these...
According to Hurricane Katrina At Issue Disasters, economic damages from Hurricane Katrina have been estimated at more than $200 billion… More than a million people were displaced by the storm… An estimated 120,000 homes were abandoned and will probably be destroyed in Louisiana alone (At * Issue). For this perspective, “Hurricane Katrina change the Gulf Coast landscape and face of its culture when it hit in 2005” (Rushton). A disaster like Katrina is something the victims are always going to remember, for the ones the lost everything including their love ones. Katrina became a nightmare for all the people that were surround in the contaminated waters in the city of New Orleans. People were waiting to be rescue for days,
News of the devastating hurricane Katrina and its economic, political, social, and humanitarian consequences dominated global headlines in an unprecedented manner when this natural catastrophe struck the region of New Orleans in mid August 2005 (Katrinacoverage.com). As a tradition, large-scale disasters like Katrina, inevitably, bring out a combination of the best and the worst news media instincts. As such, during the height of Hurricane Katrina’s rage, many journalists for once located their gag reflex and refused to swallow shallow and misleading excuses and explanations from public officials. Nevertheless, the media’s eagerness to report thinly substantiated rumors may have played a key role in bringing about cultural wreckage that may take the American society years to clean up.
Hurricane Katrina was one of the most devastating natural disasters to happen in the United States. The storm resulted in more then US$100 billion in damage when the cities flood protection broke and 80% of the city was flooded (1). The protection failure was not the only cause for the massive flooding, the hurricanes clockwise rotation pulled water from north of New Orleans into the city. 330,000 homes were destroyed and 400,000 people from New Orleans were displaced, along with 13,00 killed (1). Although the population quickly recovered, the rate of recovery slowed down as the years went on leading us to believe not everyone
Taylor, Quintard. "Chapter 5." From Timbuktu to Katrina: Readings in African American History. Boston, Mass.: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2008. N. pag. Print.
Kay, Joseph. "Hurricane Katrina: a calamity compounded by poverty and neglect." World Socialist Website. N.p., 31 Aug. 2005. Web. 17 Apr. 2014.
Throughout, the documentary one can come to the conclusion that most of these African- Americans who live in this area are being judged as violent and bad people. However this is not the case, many of them are just normal people who are try...
Rudolph, Alexander Jr. Racism, African Americans and Social Justice. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005. 71. Print.