My boss is driving me home to the train station yesterday and she has Bill O’Reilly on. He makes this statement that the hardest areas hit by Katrina were white. Bill was making some comments about Barak Obama’s comments. I did some googling, but white seems to always bring up the Whit house. My question is: Is Bill correct? I would like to keep this GQ, so please no off-hand comments about Bill, politics, classicism, racism, etc. Thanks!
It is pretty hard to figure out but I wouldn’t go so far to call it a baseless claim. Despite protests about racism, the poor and largely black areas of New Orleans are getting most of the attention. St. Bernard Parish, containing largely white suburbs outside of New Orleans, has been utterly destroyed and you don’t here much about it. Part of that is because there isn’t anything left there to report on. The beach areas of Biloxi and Gulfport were almost completed destroyed as well and those are majority white areas.
I don’t know how to quanify this data to support or reject what O’Reilly is saying. There are plenty of white areas that have absolute destruction compared to the black areas that only have utter destruction.
Did Mr. O’Reilly provide a verifiable cite for his claim?
I think it would also depend upon whether you consider there to be difference between “where Katrina struck” and the breaking of the levees in NO.
Of the few times I’ve listened to his show, he usually touts a cite right away. Some times, a caller asks for it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in the car long enough to hear. However, the way he talked about it, he made it seem so matter of fact. I ask this question because of all the coverage I’ve seen, they mainly concentrate on NOLA and how they didn’t get help.
I have heard that the Garden District, an upper class historical district, was relatively untouched by hurricane damage.
Just to be clear, here, there’s a distinction between which areas were hardest hit, and which people. If the people living in the hardest-hit areas had more resources (notably cars, and also places to go outside of the afflicted area), then one would see a higher evacuation rate there, and therefore less loss of human life.
The major damage in NO was due to levee failure and subsequent flooding by the waters of Lake P.; not by Katrina. In the case of NO, the areas nearest the levees and the lowest areas were populated by a greater concentration of urban poor, which were majority black.
However, there was planty of damage to NO, except for the French Quarter and Jefferson Parish, which seemed to be higher up and farther away from the damged levee.
You might argue that a large number of blacks were affected by the NO mess. However, Katrina did a number on multiple states, wiping out and damaging many places that involved fewer people, and involved less dramatic concentrations of black people.
If you argue people, NO was the big loser, due to population concentration. If you argue communities, there were many majority white communities, albeit rural and with lesser population concentrations, spread out over two or three states.
I am certainly not trying to be nit picky here but i have a little insight into a couple of things here.
the levee breaks were a result of katrina. i don’t think elaboration is needed. second, the first levee to break (17th street canal) was actually in the most white neighborhood in the town. it was not a mile from where i lived less than 4-months ago. the london canal levee was in a diverse area but still rather well off. it was the area of the university of new orleans.
just for some additional insight. the reason the french quarter and the uptown garden district and to a lesser degree the bayou st john / esplanade areas sit higher has to do with the old paths of the mississippi river. they are located on what are called river ridges. these are the old banks of the mississippi before it’s path was forced to stay as it is now.
ok, to the question. i can only speak about N.O. but my input is that the more white neighborhoods were hit first and hardest by the initial levee breaks. the majority of people of these areas were able to flee. the property value in these areas is higher than most others in the city so they had a higher monetary loss. those in the poorer areas may not have lost the dollar amount but they truely lost everything.
several of my well off freinds thast fled the storm have decided to simply move on and not go back. they are buying houses in new areas and getting back to normal. living near the 17th street canal they lost everything but were not left destitude.
think of a poor family that may have lived near the quarter (there were alot of them). they may have a house and their things but living week to week and having no work can just as easily devistate them.
consider those two and ask who was hit harder by the storm
Wouldn’t he be saying this about how the areas where houses were violently destroyed by Katrina, were mostly near the beach, therefore mostly wealthy, therefore mostly white? That would be a suitable definition of “hardest hit” - that it destroyed houses and other buildings. The flooding of NO is a mess, but doesn’t really seem like it was “hit hard” by a hurricane.
The eye of Katrina actually missed New Orleans. It passed east of the city and hit the Mississippi coastline. From the video on CNN it appears this area is mostly white.
All of the speculation about which houses were destroyed or where the eye of the hurricane made landfall is irrelevant, isn’t it? Nobody’s arguing the hurricane was racist. It’s possible the claim is true, but if so, so what?
In the coastal towns, the storm surge reduced the outer several blocks of homes (occupied mostly by wealthy white people) to matchwood. However, the failed levees that let Lake Ponchartrain into NO destroyed the homes of many more black people. In most floods, many homes can be cleaned up and re-occupied. However, the NO flood loosened so much chemical pollution, and steeped the homes for so long in sewage and mold, that most of the homes will have to be destroyed. They are no longer safe to live in.
It’s not accurate, as Cerberus says, that NO’s flooding was not caused by Katrina. The storm caused a surge in the lake just like the one that hurt Biloxi from the gulf. The surge caused breaks in the neglected levees, and the lake suddenly roared into the city. The flood was a direct result of the hurricane.
When did human tragedy become a competition?
When politicians got involved.
I just wanted to justify O’Reilly’s claim. He did make the point that media coverage was concentrated mainly on blacks, and NOLA in general. I haven’t been keeping up with news because of work, and when I did, there was a lot of reports, mostly unsubstantiated, that I decided to wait (and read the SDMB in the meantime). Then, I hear Bill make this claim; and, I thought, from the media coverage, that he was wrong, because, like him, all I saw were black people, and NOLA.
However, Shagnasty does make a point that it’s difficult to quanitfy destruction. Also, Asknott does point out a distinction between actual hurricane damage and flood damage.
Though, I must ask: since Katrina is blamed for the flood in NOLA, shouldn’t it be blamed for the damage as well?