6-05-06, 9:44 am
In the disaster following Hurricane Katrina, 1,836 people died, more than all of the US military deaths in the first two full years of the Iraq war. 8/29 lists among the greatest natural disasters in US history. In his latest book, Come Hell or High Water, author Professor Michael Eric Dyson scrutinizes why and for whom the disaster proved so deadly and what it will take to ensure it never happens again.
Dyson points out that a great tragedy made evident by the storm and subsequent media coverage of the humanitarian disaster, aside from the Bush administration’s failure to rescue the predominantly Black victims of New Orleans, one of the hardest hit places, was 'the exposure to the extremes [racism and poverty], not their existence, that stumps our national sense of decency.'
Dyson states, 'We can abide the ugly presence of poverty so long as it doesn't interrupt the natural flow of things.' Mostly, we don't fret about it too much, until some major event shakes us from our stupor. Katrina was one of those events that turned the tables on us, Dyson says.
Without a doubt, Bush;s criminal response to the Katrina disaster showed his priorities. He doesn't care about Black and poor people. The right-wing ideology of weak government and relying on market forces helped kill those 1,836 people. There is no doubt.
Republican hatred for social programs aimed at aiding and empowering the lower strata of our society cultivated the conditions that made the impact of Katrina's destruction likely. Bush's stubborn 'resolve' to 'stay the course' with his illegal and immoral war in Iraq ensured that few National Guard resources, let alone resources for public works projects to strengthen levees, would be available to rescue the fathers, mothers, and children trapped in polluted waters without food and potable water for days.
These facts are indisputable.
But Dyson, in the tradition of Thomas Paine and Frederick Douglass, doesn't just point the accusing finger at the obvious culprits. He deliberately questions and examines what we, the people, have done and what we can to do about it. We are responsible for turning our own blind eyes and cold hearts against the people we so painfully and desperately watched on TV being left and forgotten in New Orleans after the storm.
We are responsible for buying into the lies perpetrated by the political right and the ideologues of the so-called free market that tell us we are not our brothers' keepers, that individualism is what makes our society work. We bought into this dangerous falsehood, so we too share responsibility for the great atrocity that started on 8/29.
Along with providing a detailed account of the events that followed the storm and a well-researched look at the failings of the US government on many different levels, Dyson's book is a jeremiad for a united struggle of all the people not just for more charity but structures of social justice. It is a call for overturning conditions of poverty, racial segregation and economic inequality. It calls for an honest national dialogue on race and racism. Come Hell or High Water is a well thought out political tract and an impassioned appeal for the full realization of our stunted democracy.
--Joel Wendland is managing editor of Political Affairs and may be reached at
