Post-Katrina New Orleans: A Synopsis of US Urban Problems

I believe there has been no greater irony of the "affluent society" than the flood-ravaged New Orleans. People may be equal before nature, but their ability to avert disasters varies according to their income, which, in the US, is inevitably intertwined with race. The white and affluent fled, and the poor and (disproportionately) black were stranded. In that overcrowded and steamy stadium, which was used as a temporary shelter for Katrina victims,you see the face of the urban black America, literally. And I hope that image has not been completely erased by the sentimental news of community rebuilding and common ground. Rebuilding is a good thing, except that sentimentalism doesn't cover up the racial-social problems that has persisted in American society and that was exposed and magnified by Katrina.

A video report in NY Times a couple of days ago talked about how New Orleansians are fighting back the post-storm trauma with good humor (Commercial ads like that "New Orleans has never been dry."). Today's issue of NY Times tells a more somber story about some New Orleansians(mostly professionals) giving up hope and moving out of the city, leaving it to crimes and the poor (and black) . http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/16/us/nationalspecial/16orleans.html
It says that professionals (meaning mostly white and rich with higher education and more skills) have more financial resources and thus greater mobility than the poor (black and minority) urban dwellers, who have few other alternative but to come back and settle down. See for yourself in the two pictures posted in the article (whites moving out, blacks moving in). It also suggests that "brain drain" had been there in pre-Katrina New Orleans, and Katrina was only there to fast-forward the process.

Open an American history textbooks, you see racial progress, from slavery to abolition, from Jim Crow to dissegregation and racial reconciliation. And it gives you a soothing feeling. But look at the post-Katrina New Orleans, past and present. The harsh reality is that America remains (or is increasingly becoming) segregated socially and economically. The efforts of a generation of black civil rights activists have helped African Americans win political equality in the 60s, but since then, has lost its momentum. I don't know how much difference the election of a black or woman president will make to the country as a whole, except that it may be used as a showcase to the world that America has achieved total racial/sexual equality. Even though I support Obama heartily, I know his candidacy is built upon the efforts of the Martin Luther King generation, not ours. There's more that we need to look into and more to do for ourselves. In this respect, the page of New Orleans has been turned over a little too rashly.