Class, Race, and Social Change:  Katrina’s Perfect Storm

 

by Stephen J. McNamee

 

Editor’s Note: This article was presented on June 9 at a conference on global warming held at UNCW. The conference was organized by the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Wilmington in partnership with the UNCW Division for Public Service and Continuing Studies. For additional information on the conference, go to http://www.globalwarmingnc.com.

 

 

“…the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.” —Hubert H. Humphrey

 

By this standard as expressed by Hubert H. Humphrey (former Senator from Minnesota, former Vice-President, and former Presidential candidate), government at all levels failed that test miserably in the aftermath of Katrina. The people who were left behind and especially those who died were disproportionately poor, African-America, women, the elderly, and the infirmed. 

Those who live on the margins of society are the most vulnerable to any disruption or disaster. To that extent, the Katrina disaster was not any different than prior American disasters (Powers, 2006). You might also recall, for instance, that in the Titanic disaster passengers in third class storage proportionally suffered the highest losses while those in first class, the least. Those at the bottom of the system—literally and figuratively--typically absorb most of the shock that the shock of such disasters brings.

The “unnatural” non-randomness of the death and destruction often related to “natural” disasters comes as a surprise to some since natural disasters obviously do not “target” particular populations. However, the haunting images of the people left behind in the wake of Katrina were seen as a “wake up call” or the “canary in the mine” of what lies just below the surface in most large American cities. What happened in New Orleans could just as easily have happened in Atlantic City, Miami, Baltimore, LA, or Wilmington for that matter or any other city with large poor and minority populations. Those with the least amount of resources and the fewest options are most likely to get left behind. 

In a single snapshot, Katrina exposed underlying economic, social, and political conditions that characterize most large urban areas in America today.

Prior to the storm, the poverty rate in New Orleans was 28% compared to 12% nationally; the black poverty rate in New Orleans was 35% or about three times the national rate. Like most large cities, New Orleans prior to the storm was highly segregated—two thirds of the city population was black; 75% of the suburbs were white (Hartman and Squires, 2006: 3). In the notorious Lower Ninth Ward immediately adjacent to the ruptured levies, 98% of the residents were black (Powell et. al., 2006: 64). The higher ground in the trendy French Quarter was much less affected. 

This racialized pattern of residence and poverty did not just spontaneously erupt like the storm itself, but had been generations in the making. It reflects the cumulative result of a long history of racism and institutional discrimination.  Decades of exclusionary zoning laws, housing and employment discrimination, racial steering, redlining, unequal and under-funded public schools and services reinforced these patterns.

New Orleans prior to Katrina is just but one example of the cumulative effects of urban succession. While Katrina exposed the underbelly of the underclass in New Orleans, normally hidden from view for most Americans, neither government officials nor the press focused attention on why an underclass was there in the first place. Instead, the focus was on reactions to the disaster itself.

Many Americans, particularly white Americans, falsely assume that the problem of “race” in America was largely resolved in the 1960s. As a nation, we had been there and done that and had moved on. But while some had moved on and moved ahead, many were left behind. Since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, there has been both an increase in both the black middle class and an increase in the black underclass. That is, while the economic circumstances for some African Americans improved as new opportunities opened up especially in the government and nonprofit sectors and especially among those with higher levels of educational attainment, the economic circumstances for a significant segment of the African American population deteriorated. The story of those who were left behind the progress is the story of the urban underclass.

During the height of industrialization in America in the mid-twentieth century, African American farm laborers displaced by automation of farm production poured into the urban industrial centers seeking jobs in expanding factories. As this migration was still occurring, U.S. industrial corporations radically altered their strategies for capital expansion. Several strategies were pursued simultaneously, including shifting sites of production, encouraging “supply side” government policy, and “downsizing.” As part of “downsizing” campaigns, corporations replaced permanent higher paid workers with “outsourced” contract labor, and increased temporary and contingent labor. To further reduce costs of production, corporations began shifting production away from the urban industrial centers in the Northcentral and Northeast parts of the United States to the South and Southwest.  These moves reduced costs of production by relocating factory production to states with lower wages, less unionization, and less government taxation and regulation. Corporations also aggressively shifted production overseas to take even greater advantage of these savings. As part of the pressure to keep remaining domestic facilities operating in the U.S., corporations often extracted “concessions” and “give-backs” from workers, further reducing wages and benefits.

At the same time, corporations pressed for changes in government policy.  Corporate taxes and taxes on the wealthy were lowered. Large segments of the economy were deregulated, and transfer payments to the poor were reduced. Operating in a new climate of relaxed government regulation, big business entered into a frenzy of mega-mergers, takeovers, and acquisitions. Most mergers resulted in layoffs as combined entities realized savings from increased economies of scale. Billions of dollars were taken out of the economy to finance mega-mergers. Through mergers and stock manipulations, investors could make money without increasing domestic production or creating new jobs. When the dust cleared, there were fewer bigger corporations. Wages fell, profits rose, and inequality increased. Economic mobility declined; job instability increased.

Millions of American workers were caught up in the tidal force of these structural changes. As with most forms of social change, those already living on the edge were hurt the most. Thousands of jobs in the manufacturing sector were lost. New jobs were created, but these were mostly in the “soft” low-wage, low-skill, service sector. Legions of working class families who poured into the cities seeking factory work at the height of industrial era were now displaced. The American economy was being been transformed from auto, steel, and textiles to hamburgers, day care, and Walmarts. 

Even before Katrina, New Orleans had fallen on especially hard times.  Traditionally, the economy was primarily based on the port, oil, and tourism (Whelan, 2006). But with de-industrialization and other global changes in the economy, industrial and manufacturing employment plummeted in New Orleans taking a huge gouge out of what had been relatively stable middle and working class employment base. What remained was an increasingly bifurcated class structure,  mirroring trends in the nation as a whole but more exaggerated in New Orleans than elsewhere. The one stable source of employment that remained was tourism—typically good for owners but not so good for low wage and low skill workers. 

In some ways, a tourist and service based economy has recreated a class structure more typical of agrarian societies. In some ways, the emerging class structure in these areas is reminiscent of the class structure of the “Old South”—one relatively small privileged class able to spend money on leisure and services and a large underprivileged class largely providing those services with a relatively small middle class in-between. 

One of the reasons why many Americans were so taken aback by the events of Katrina is that we do not have an adequate vocabulary or framework of meaning to make sense of them. Americans tend to view the world in highly individual terms.  Americans are sympathetic to victims of disasters precisely because the effects of such disasters are presumed to be random and indiscriminate. The shock of the images from New Orleans called those assumptions into question. For many Americans, poverty and racism are out of sight and out of mind. Racism and poverty are viewed often only in individual terms without full understanding or appreciation of the inertial and stubbornly persistence effects of long-term institutional arrangements in society (e.g. historical patterns of residential segregation). Americans understand that using derogatory language to refer to African American basketball players at Rutgers University is racist but Americans do not as easily see that decades of under-funding largely segregated inner city public schools is institutionally discriminatory, built into the fabric of institutional and organizational arrangements in society.  

Class, in many ways, is even more difficult for Americans to comprehend. For the most part, Americans also view wealth and poverty in strictly individual terms and are in deep denial about the structural conditions that tend to reproduce life chances across generations. The race to get ahead in America is largely a staggered start relay race in which we inherit a starting point from parents that establishes a life trajectory that is highly determinative of future outcomes (McNamee and Miller, 2004). Katrina represented the perfect storm that exposed the underbelly of the institutional effects of race, class, and social change which many Americans may tend not to notice otherwise. 

To summarize, I would like to emphasize three main points. First, the events of Katrina can only be fully understood in historical and institutional rather than strictly individual terms. Second, those who are the most vulnerable and who have the least amount of resources available to adjust to new circumstances suffer the most adverse effects from the social disruption and social dislocation that accompanies any form of social change, including rapid naturally induced ones like hurricanes or more slow impacting ones like global warning. And third, structural problems call for structural solutions. If nothing else, the travesty and the tragedy of Katrina may help us to more closely focus on these underlying structural conditions in how society is organized as a whole.

 

Dr. Stephen J. McNamee is Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

 

 

References:

 

Hartman, Chester and Gregory d. Squires.  2006. “Pre-Katrina, Post-Katina” Pp. 1-11 in There is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster: Race, Class, and Hurricane Katrina. Edited by Chester Harman and Gregory D. Squires. New York:  Routledge.

 

McNamee, Stephen J. and Robert K. Miller. 2004. The Meritocracy Myth.  Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.

 

powell, john a., Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Daniel W. Newhart, and Eric Stiens. “Towards a Transformative View of Race: The Crisis and Opportunity of Katrina,” Pp 59-84.

 

Powers, Michael P. 2006. “A Matter of Choice: Historical Lessons for Disaster      Recovery” Pp. 13-35 in There is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster: Race,      Class, and Hurricane Katrina, edited by Chester Harman and Gregory D. Squires.
New York: Routledge.

 

Whelan, Robert K. 2006 “An Old Economy for the ‘New’ New Orleans?  Post-Hurricane Katrina Economic Development Efforts” Pp. 185-195 in There is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster: Race, Class, and Hurricane Katrina edited by Chester Harman and Gregory D. Squires.  New York:  Routledge.