For the St. Louis American
As one man in New Orleans said: “You mean to tell me that in a place where you probably have thousands of people that have died and thousands more that are dying every day, that we can’t figure out a way to authorize the resources that we need? Come on, man.”
A salvo of attacks have been unleashed at the Bush administration for being, again, caught flatfooted, this time by the devastation worught by Hurricane Ktrina. With the 9/11 terrorist attacks, most Americans resigned themselves to rallying around the president for fear of worsening national security. But now it looks as if Bush’s slower-than-normal response to disaster may be a pattern. And his recent cutting of nearly $80 million that would helped control floods in New Orleans looks disastrously short-sighted.
People have been stunned beyond belief, horrified even, that this could happen in the U.S. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin cursed and lashed out at the Bush administration. Others have blamed local and state authorities for lack of preparedness. Others wonder why people were put in a football stadium rather than a military base for emergency housing.
Also distressing is the media’s attention to so-called looters. Two Associated Press photos widely circulated on the internet show a black male being described as a “looter” while a white couple are described as “finding food.” The blatant double standards are atrocious.
The military was ordered to shoot marauders, when many were not looters. Dehydrated and hungry, they were scrounging for anything to eat and survive and help others survive.
Hurricane Katrina struck in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, but it was “hell on earth” in New Orleans, which is 70 percent black. There is a sinister view that the slow response was due to so many residents being poor and black. Equally compelling is the lack of political will that miserably failed these victims.
Malaika Horne, Ph.D., is director of the Executive Leadership Institute in the College of Business Administration at UM-St. Louis