Race, Poverty, and Policy in the Wake of Disaster: Post‐Katrina Views

Abstract

Hurricane Katrina has produced a substantial body of literature. Here, I examine one of the first and most widely read books on the social consequences and implications of the storm by Michael Eric Dyson, and then look at some of the most recently published volumes on this topic. In general, the authors ask good questions and sometimes even have good answers, but there are also many important questions that they do not ask. From the perspective of inequality, the perspective that dominates the works discussed in this essay, the demographics of pre-Katrina New Orleans showed a place of striking differences in opportunity and advantage, especially on racial grounds. In 2000, over two-thirds of the people in the city were African American, but African Americans constituted 82% of the city’s poor. Children were disproportionately represented among the poor and among the city’s majority black population. One-third of the black residents were younger than 18 years of age, compared to only 14% of the smaller white group, and an estimated 94% of poor children in New Orleans were African American. While there were certainly low-income whites and wealthy African Americans in the Crescent City, the group-level income gaps were striking. New Orleans whites in 2000 had a median family income of $46,600 and a median household income of $52,500. The black median family and household incomes were half of those: $23,300 and $25,750, respectively (Ruggles et al. 2010). Behind these stark