Race, Poverty, and Unemployment in New Orleans

In a case of perfect timing, while mourning the 6-year anniversary of Bush's inauguration yesterday, d reminded us of how incompetent and ultimately responsible the Bush administration was in the humanitarian disaster that was the so-called "handling" of New Orleans during Katrina in 2005. Today, the New York Times has an article that is actually extremely important in understanding the decline of New Orleans (and of other parts of the South) that unequally disadvantaged poor and/or African-Americans. The article does a great job of showing how the theory that New Orleans was in a disastrous economic decline, and that those who suffered most wer residents of the lower-income areas (who were predominantly black). While the writer does not directly raise the issue of race, references to the conjunction of race and class pop up throughout the article, and the spectre of racism hangs nebulously over the whole article. It's powerful stuff for those who think, and is well worth checking out.

(And hopefully, wingnuts won't use this article to claim that Bush didn't really fuck anything up in New Orleans because it was already going downhill, thereby showing the same "compassion" that Barbara Bush did in 2005.)