Katrina betrays the fragility of civilisation

Hurricane Katrina has devastated New Orleans. The human aftermath however, has been very telling of society, specifically, that of the United States. Victims, huddling together in shops, rooftops and trees, armed gangs looting, refugee camps becoming scenes of rapes, murder and robbery, the pitifully slow emergency response from the government.

Though one cannot minimise the scale of the natural disaster, this cannot, however, be blamed for the evident disintergration of civilised behaviour. It is hard to imagine that level of depravity could happen in any other Western nation with a similar natural disaster. For example, the areas affected by the tsunami in late 2004 did fall into such anarchy.

No, there is something dark and malicious festering under the thin veneer of civility in the US. When tested in the crucible of natural disaster or the stress of extreme social upheaval, this mask is torn away revealing decades if not centuries of unresolved social and racial tension.

The Sydney Morning Herald today had a very good editorial and opinion piece to this regard.

From: The Sydney Morning Herald

Floods reaffirm ugly truth of racial divide (excerpt)
September 6, 2005

...THE waters flow in and the waters flow out, washing away all that once lay on the surface - and revealing what lies beneath. So it is with all floods in all places, but now it is the United States which stands exposed. And neither the US nor the world much likes what it sees.

The first revelation was not spoken in words, but written in the faces of those left behind. TV viewers could not help but notice it, and Americans could not deny it. The women pleading for their lives in handwritten signs, the children clinging to tree branches, the prisoners herded onto a jail roof - they were overwhelmingly black.

This will not be news to most Americans. They know that a racial divide still haunts their country, as it has from its founding. Race is America's fatal flaw, the weakness which so often brings it low.

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, could see the danger. "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just. His justice cannot sleep forever," he wrote in 1785, reflecting on the crime that was slavery.

Time and time again, the US has been forced to wake up to the racial injustice which has been its historic curse. It was the source of a civil war in the 19th century and of repeated battles through the 20th. From the desegregation and civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s to the Los Angeles riots, the US has undergone periodic reminders that it is in the relationship between black and white that it has failed to honour its own, animating ideals...

...White Americans, who regarded New Orleans as a kind of playground, a place to enjoy the carnal pleasures, have learnt things about that city that they would probably have preferred not to know...

...They have also learnt that 28 per cent of the people of New Orleans live in poverty and that 84 per cent of those are black. Or that some people in that city were so poor, they did not have the money to catch a bus out of town - that race, in other words, determined who got left behind. Most Americans want to believe that kind of inequality belongs in the past. But Katrina has shaken them from that delusion.

They have had to face another painful truth. Their Government has proved itself incompetent. Yes, it could act quickly once it had decided to act - but it idled for days. This disastrous performance will surely saddle the remainder of George Bush's presidency...

...The authorities in Louisiana, including the military, pleaded long ago with Washington to reinforce the levees that were designed to save New Orleans from a great flood. The Army Corps of Engineers asked for $US105 million ($136 million): the White House gave it $US40 million...


From: The Sydney Morning Herald

Katrina's big victim (excerpt)
September 6, 2005

...The weather warning delivered to New Orleans on the morning of Sunday, August 28, was clear and precise: Hurricane Katrina would bring devastating damage. It would render large areas of the city uninhabitable for weeks. Half of all well-built houses would have roofs and walls fail. On and on it went. And yet, though warnings were issued and the city evacuated as far it could be, US authorities appear to have done little to be ready to help those left behind.

Exactly who is to blame for America's spectacular failure to look after its own will no doubt be determined by detailed inquiries in coming months, but without any doubt the political burden now falls heaviest on the shoulders of its President, George Bush. The sick, the elderly, the newborn left to die in squalor without food or water as armed gangs rape, loot and kill - these images from the world's richest nation are not quickly forgotten. The US, like the rest of the world, is shocked. But it is angry, too. Mr Bush has toured the devastation twice now. He has hugged the homeless and encouraged aid workers. But despite his attempts at Churchillian rhetoric, Mr Bush is looking less and less like the leader for a crisis...

...Though previous administrations may have neglected New Orleans, reports that resources which might have gone to maintain its levees were diverted by the US Army Corps of Engineers to Iraq will tell against him. The theme "charity begins at home" has resounded like an ostinato bass note through reports of the catastrophe, as victim after victim compares Washington's energetic efforts in the Middle East and after the tsunami with its tardiness in its own southern states since Katrina came ashore...