John Whitehead's Commentary
Hurricane Katrina: The Gap Between the Rich and the Poor
On the Friday following Hurricane Katrina's march through the South, which left countless Americans dead or homeless, NBC aired a live television benefit concert to raise money for disaster relief efforts. Rapper Kanye West, putting in an appearance as a presenter, was supposed to read from a prepared script. However, West strayed from the pre-approved text to voice his concerns about the government's slow response to the devastation.
Considering that more than a week has passed, dead bodies remain in the streets of New Orleans and we are no closer to knowing how many people have died, Kanye West was justified in voicing his concerns about what journalist Tom Engelhardt has described as "Iraq in America." In his article, "At the Front of Nowhere at All," Engelhardt writes, "Much of New Orleans has become the Atlantis from hell, a toxic sludge pool of a looted former city, filled with dead bodies, burning in places, threatened with diseases like cholera and typhus that haven't visited the Big Easy since early in the last century..."
West may have come closest to the mark when he noted that the government is set up "to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible." However, the statement that has received the most notice and had many African-Americans rallying behind West is his criticism that "George Bush doesn't care about black people."
George W. Bush may very well care about black people, but one thing is clear: he does not understand them and the poverty that many of them must endure. Bush was born into a family of great wealth. His father, former President George H. W. Bush, made a fortune in the oil industry in the 1950s and 1960s, ensuring that his family would never want for anything--at least not in the way of material possessions.
Yet to truly understand want, a person must at some point have lived without the basic necessities of life. When a member of the National Guard who was distributing life-saving provisions such as food and water to hurricane victims asked a woman what she needed, the woman responded, "Everything." How does a person who has grown up with a silver spoon in his mouth relate to that degree of desperate need? It is possible to do so. I have known affluent individuals who made a concerted effort to understand the plight of the poor and ease their suffering. They would not have been caught smiling gaily for the cameras and playing a guitar while thousands of Americans battled for their lives in a hurricane, as Bush did--an error in judgment that the press was quick to point out.
Former first lady Barbara Bush's recent remarks about the refugees in Houston's Astrodome simply underscore the problem. She said, "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them." But Bertha Miller, one of the many African-American refugees being housed in the Astrodome, saw things differently. Speaking about her missing family members, she said: "I have no idea where they are. I am here in this city all by myself. There is no one. I'm seeing people joining with their family and it hurts. I don't know how long I can keep my sanity. I'm afraid for my own life. If I'm missing, there is no one to say that I'm missing. So it does hurt, but I'm trying to hold on."
The reality is that thousands of people have just lost everything they own, not to mention family members, friends and loved ones. In short, their lives have been destroyed. But if Barbara Bush's words are anything to go by, their current situation should be considered a step up for them. They are being given food and shelter so that makes up for their tremendous losses. Her words, naïve as they are, were not spoken with malice, and although she may care about these people, she simply cannot grasp their plight. Like her son, she does not know what it is to be poor.
The heart of this problem lies in the fact that the gap between the rich and the poor has increased. According to the 2002 Census, the wealthiest 20% of Americans accounted for 50% of the total U.S. income. The bottom fifth only accounted for 3.5%. This is a striking difference, which can accurately be described as "two Americas." Poor Americans cannot comprehend having as much money as the upper class. Nor can most of the wealthy understand what it is like to be without money. The gap between the two worlds is growing wider--the rich continue to get richer, while the poor become poorer.
This becomes a major problem with regard to government leaders. Campaigning for public office is an expensive endeavor. As a result, wealthy individuals are usually the only ones able to afford to run for national office. And only the rich become president. Thus, we have a nation run by an upper-class elite unable to relate to the middle class and the underprivileged.
Not only do our leaders not relate to well over half of the American people, they also have strong allegiances to those who, like themselves, are rich. This was demonstrated by Bush's tax cut a few years ago that primarily benefited the wealthy. It was the wealthy that helped him achieve office, and it is the wealthy that he understands. Thus, it makes sense that he would have their interests at heart.
Our government leaders' inability to relate to the less privileged classes is not the only problem facing the poor. There is a tendency in America, especially among the wealthy, to ignore the poor, sweeping them aside and pretending they do not exist. Last year, writer Mike Davis described this in relation to Hurricane Ivan in a piece called "Poor, Black, and Left Behind." He wrote, "The evacuation of New Orleans in the face of Hurricane Ivan looked sinisterly like Strom Thurmond's version of the Rapture. Affluent white people fled the Big Easy in their SUVs, while the old and car-less--mainly Black--were left behind in their below-sea-level shotgun shacks and aging tenements to face the watery wrath." He went on to explain that helping the poor was simply a hesitant afterthought: "Only at the last moment, with winds churning Lake Pontchartrain, did Mayor Ray Nagin reluctantly open the Louisiana Superdome and a few schools to desperate residents. He was reportedly worried that lower-class refugees might damage or graffiti the Superdome."
Sadly, although journalists reported on the inequality of evacuations last year, nothing was done to fix this problem. In fact, the Bush Administration even cut funding for major hurricane and flood protection projects by millions of dollars. This year, however, Katrina ensured that the nation can no longer ignore the plight of the poor.
This nation was built on Judeo-Christian principles, which include a mandate to care for the poor. However, it appears that we have largely forgotten this important principle. In cities based on tourism, such as New Orleans, the poor seem to be nothing more than an obstacle preventing the city from making money. Who wants to leave a casino or nightclub and be met by a panhandler? Our cities view the poor as an embarrassment. Thus, rather than helping them, we try to push them to the side in the hope that they will disappear.
Katrina has shown the nation the inability of the "haves" to recognize the problems facing the "have-nots." The two groups live in entirely different worlds. One solution to this problem is to be more discerning about whom we elect to office. A true representative must be able to understand those he or she is representing. Therefore, Americans should stop electing those who cannot relate to the concerns of the majority of Americans. Not only should Americans take Katrina's lesson to heart regarding voting, they should be more self-conscious about their own individual treatment of the poor.
If not for Katrina, would the nation have ever noticed the thousands of underprivileged in New Orleans? Would you?
Try this: The next time you walk past someone asking for your loose change on the street, see if you find yourself averting your eyes and ignoring him. It should not take a national crisis for us to want to help our fellow, less-advantaged human beings.
Considering that more than a week has passed, dead bodies remain in the streets of New Orleans and we are no closer to knowing how many people have died, Kanye West was justified in voicing his concerns about what journalist Tom Engelhardt has described as "Iraq in America." In his article, "At the Front of Nowhere at All," Engelhardt writes, "Much of New Orleans has become the Atlantis from hell, a toxic sludge pool of a looted former city, filled with dead bodies, burning in places, threatened with diseases like cholera and typhus that haven't visited the Big Easy since early in the last century..."
West may have come closest to the mark when he noted that the government is set up "to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible." However, the statement that has received the most notice and had many African-Americans rallying behind West is his criticism that "George Bush doesn't care about black people."
George W. Bush may very well care about black people, but one thing is clear: he does not understand them and the poverty that many of them must endure. Bush was born into a family of great wealth. His father, former President George H. W. Bush, made a fortune in the oil industry in the 1950s and 1960s, ensuring that his family would never want for anything--at least not in the way of material possessions.
Yet to truly understand want, a person must at some point have lived without the basic necessities of life. When a member of the National Guard who was distributing life-saving provisions such as food and water to hurricane victims asked a woman what she needed, the woman responded, "Everything." How does a person who has grown up with a silver spoon in his mouth relate to that degree of desperate need? It is possible to do so. I have known affluent individuals who made a concerted effort to understand the plight of the poor and ease their suffering. They would not have been caught smiling gaily for the cameras and playing a guitar while thousands of Americans battled for their lives in a hurricane, as Bush did--an error in judgment that the press was quick to point out.
Former first lady Barbara Bush's recent remarks about the refugees in Houston's Astrodome simply underscore the problem. She said, "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them." But Bertha Miller, one of the many African-American refugees being housed in the Astrodome, saw things differently. Speaking about her missing family members, she said: "I have no idea where they are. I am here in this city all by myself. There is no one. I'm seeing people joining with their family and it hurts. I don't know how long I can keep my sanity. I'm afraid for my own life. If I'm missing, there is no one to say that I'm missing. So it does hurt, but I'm trying to hold on."
The reality is that thousands of people have just lost everything they own, not to mention family members, friends and loved ones. In short, their lives have been destroyed. But if Barbara Bush's words are anything to go by, their current situation should be considered a step up for them. They are being given food and shelter so that makes up for their tremendous losses. Her words, naïve as they are, were not spoken with malice, and although she may care about these people, she simply cannot grasp their plight. Like her son, she does not know what it is to be poor.
The heart of this problem lies in the fact that the gap between the rich and the poor has increased. According to the 2002 Census, the wealthiest 20% of Americans accounted for 50% of the total U.S. income. The bottom fifth only accounted for 3.5%. This is a striking difference, which can accurately be described as "two Americas." Poor Americans cannot comprehend having as much money as the upper class. Nor can most of the wealthy understand what it is like to be without money. The gap between the two worlds is growing wider--the rich continue to get richer, while the poor become poorer.
This becomes a major problem with regard to government leaders. Campaigning for public office is an expensive endeavor. As a result, wealthy individuals are usually the only ones able to afford to run for national office. And only the rich become president. Thus, we have a nation run by an upper-class elite unable to relate to the middle class and the underprivileged.
Not only do our leaders not relate to well over half of the American people, they also have strong allegiances to those who, like themselves, are rich. This was demonstrated by Bush's tax cut a few years ago that primarily benefited the wealthy. It was the wealthy that helped him achieve office, and it is the wealthy that he understands. Thus, it makes sense that he would have their interests at heart.
Our government leaders' inability to relate to the less privileged classes is not the only problem facing the poor. There is a tendency in America, especially among the wealthy, to ignore the poor, sweeping them aside and pretending they do not exist. Last year, writer Mike Davis described this in relation to Hurricane Ivan in a piece called "Poor, Black, and Left Behind." He wrote, "The evacuation of New Orleans in the face of Hurricane Ivan looked sinisterly like Strom Thurmond's version of the Rapture. Affluent white people fled the Big Easy in their SUVs, while the old and car-less--mainly Black--were left behind in their below-sea-level shotgun shacks and aging tenements to face the watery wrath." He went on to explain that helping the poor was simply a hesitant afterthought: "Only at the last moment, with winds churning Lake Pontchartrain, did Mayor Ray Nagin reluctantly open the Louisiana Superdome and a few schools to desperate residents. He was reportedly worried that lower-class refugees might damage or graffiti the Superdome."
Sadly, although journalists reported on the inequality of evacuations last year, nothing was done to fix this problem. In fact, the Bush Administration even cut funding for major hurricane and flood protection projects by millions of dollars. This year, however, Katrina ensured that the nation can no longer ignore the plight of the poor.
This nation was built on Judeo-Christian principles, which include a mandate to care for the poor. However, it appears that we have largely forgotten this important principle. In cities based on tourism, such as New Orleans, the poor seem to be nothing more than an obstacle preventing the city from making money. Who wants to leave a casino or nightclub and be met by a panhandler? Our cities view the poor as an embarrassment. Thus, rather than helping them, we try to push them to the side in the hope that they will disappear.
Katrina has shown the nation the inability of the "haves" to recognize the problems facing the "have-nots." The two groups live in entirely different worlds. One solution to this problem is to be more discerning about whom we elect to office. A true representative must be able to understand those he or she is representing. Therefore, Americans should stop electing those who cannot relate to the concerns of the majority of Americans. Not only should Americans take Katrina's lesson to heart regarding voting, they should be more self-conscious about their own individual treatment of the poor.
If not for Katrina, would the nation have ever noticed the thousands of underprivileged in New Orleans? Would you?
Try this: The next time you walk past someone asking for your loose change on the street, see if you find yourself averting your eyes and ignoring him. It should not take a national crisis for us to want to help our fellow, less-advantaged human beings.
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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