In the aftermath of the tragedy, Katrina’s violent winds and killing waters swept into the mainstream a stark realization: the nation’s poor had been abandoned by society and its institutions long before the storm. Since then, we have failed to acknowledge that grinding poverty is fueled by social choices and public-policy decisions that directly impact how many people are poor and how long they remain that way. There were 37 million people living in poverty in the United States in 2004, the last year for which U.S. Census Bureau figures are available, and 1.1 million of those fell below the poverty line entirely. Some of the poorest folk in the nation have been largely ignored, rendered invisible, officially forgotten. FEMA and other parts of government left them dangling precipitously on rooftops and in attics because of bureaucratic bumbling. Homeland Security failed miserably in mobilizing resources to rescue Katrina survivors without food, water or shelter.
The hardest-hit regions in the Gulf States had already been drowning in extreme poverty. More than 90,000 people in each of the areas stormed by Katrina in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama made less than $10,000 a year. Black folk in these areas were strapped by incomes that were 40 percent less than those earned by whites. Before the storm, New Orleans, with a 67.9 percent black population, had more than 103,000 poor people. That means the Crescent City had a poverty rate of 23 percent, nearly double the national average of 13.1 percent.
It’s apparent that Katrina’s survivors lived in concentrated poverty—they lived in poor neighborhoods, attended poor schools and had poor-paying jobs that reflected and reinforced a distressing pattern of rigid segregation. To be sure, concentrated poverty is the product of decades of public policies and political measures that isolate black households in neighborhoods plagued by severe segregation and economic hardship. But the policies of the Bush administration have only made things worse. Ironically, Bush’s first nationally televised speech after the disaster offered hope that his administration might finally get the gist of the problem. Bush stated that the “deep, persistent poverty” of the Gulf Coast “has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which has cut off generations from the opportunity of America,” and that we must “rise above the legacy of inequality.”
Since then the president has completely backed off such bold analysis. He has failed to foster public policy and legislation that helps the poor to escape their plight. Instead, he remains intent on slashing tens of billions from social programs that help the poor combat such a vicious legacy. Neither has the president offered creative solutions to a prime source of poverty: the nation’s failing public schools. Bush’s No Child Left Behind act promised to bolster the nation’s crumbling educational infrastructure, but instead has only exacerbated the problems: underperforming schools, low reading levels, and wide racial and class disparities. Bush has even failed to sufficiently fund his own mandate, reinforcing class and educational inequality.
The health crisis of black America, which Bush has largely ignored, is made worse by extreme poverty. When Katrina swept waves of mostly poor and black folk into global view, it also graphically uncovered their poor health. Before the storm hit, more than 83,000 citizens, or 18.8 percent of the population in New Orleans, lacked health insurance (the national average is 15.5 percent); the numbers for black women doubled those of white women. Nationally, there are nearly 40 million people without health insurance, many of them black and poor. They resort to the emergency ward for health maintenance. Their survival is compromised because serious diseases are spotted later than need be. If President Bush is the compassionate conservative he says he is, then he must help fix a healthcare system that favors the wealthy and the solidly employed.
The sad truth is that under Bush’s presidency black poverty has increased, black unemployment has risen, and affirmative action has been viciously assaulted. The Bush administration has disseminated what the Government Accountability Office called “covert propaganda” by paying conservative black commentator Armstrong Williams to say good things about educational policies that hurt black folk. By giving tax breaks to the wealthy, and by keeping the minimum wage at $5.15 an hour, Bush has undermined the fragile prospects of the working poor and the black working class. By seeking to cut the Food Stamp budget by $1.1 million over the next decade, Bush will douse even further the fortunes of the black poor.
The problem is that an anti-government administration cannot develop policy that actually improves poor people’s lives. Armed with a political philosophy that has no faith in government, these leaders prove that their beliefs undercut effective governance. As the ideological children of Ronald Reagan, Bush and his administration have thrived on tax cuts, downsizing, the neglect of civic infrastructure, the shredding of the safety net, the will to privatization, the degrading of the public sector, and advocating Reagan’s idea that government is the enemy of the people. The Bush administration’s incompetence in Katrina was the most devastating indictment of such a philosophy. If it continues down that path, the plight of the poor will only get worse. But if the administration turned its back on the poor when the world was watching, what will it do now that the country has turned its eyes away? We must be even more vigilant about pressing the case for the vulnerable to an attention-deficient nation more interested in charity than justice—and to an administration more interested in covering its tracks than in relieving the suffering of the poor.
