Currently Listening The Forgotten Arm By Aimee Mann see related

This was featured on Matt Good's site, but I found it interesting enough to repeat it here for thought and discussion. It was printed in the NY Times Sunday, written by Jason DeParle-

“The white people got out. Most of them, anyway. If television and newspaper images can be deemed a statistical sample, it was mostly black people who were left behind. Poor black people, growing more hungry, sick and frightened by the hour as faraway officials counseled patience and warned that rescues take time.

What a shocked world saw exposed in New Orleans last week wasn’t just a broken levee. It was a cleavage of race and class, at once familiar and startlingly new, laid bare in a setting where they suddenly amounted to matters of life and death. Hydrology joined sociology throughout the story line, from the settling of the flood-prone city, where well-to-do white people lived on the high ground, to its frantic abandonment.

The pictures of the suffering vied with reports of marauding, of gunshots fired at rescue vehicles and armed bands taking over the streets. The city of quaint eccentricity - of King Cakes, Mardi Gras beads and nice neighbors named Tookie - had taken a Conradian turn.

In the middle of the delayed rescue, the New Orleans mayor, C.Ray Nagin, a local boy made good from a poor, black ward, burst into tears of frustration as he denounced slow moving federal officials and called for martial law.

Even people who had spent a lifetime studying race and class found themselves slack-jawed.”

More importantly, the events that took place in the past week represent a class issue, but that of course is related towards a race issue (or will be portrayed at least) since the minorities, in this case black people, are the ones who typically represent the low end of the class heirarchy. What really peaks my interest for better or worse will come when in three months (or however long it takes) refugees are relocated back to New Orleans and surrounding areas. How will thousands of people start over again with nothing in an area that will have as much opportunities as the worst cities in the country? What could this lead to? Guess I'll nervously wait and see.