"Race, Class, & Katrina"

UU Fellowship of North Westchester, New York
Sunday, October 26, 2008
The Rev. Melanie Morel-Eensminger

As I stand here I have so much to thank you for. Thank you for this opportunity to share with you in this worship service, and thanks as well for hosting the “Creating a Jubilee World” workshop for the Metro New York District. With all my heart, I thank you for the members of this church who have traveled to New Orleans since Katrina to help us with recovery. And thank you for the upcoming trip to New Orleans by your Youth Group and their advisors and chaperones. We are so grateful for all the saints who are marching with us on this long, long journey. Thank you.

It ‘s appropriate that we’re talking about New Orleans during this weekend of the Jubilee World anti-racism workshop, for what the world witnessed during and after Hurricane Katrina was a clear and precise insight, a revelation, into the intersection of race and class in America.

Who was left behind when the general evacuation order finally came on that fateful Labor Day weekend 3 years ago? That’s easy – the poor, the working class, the disabled, the elderly, the folks with no car or unreliable hoopties, the folks nowhere to go, the folks with large extended families and connections, all of whom also had nowhere to go. They were directed by authorities to the Superdome and Convention Center, where there were no generators, no police protection, and no stockpiled supplies. (Indeed, National Guard troops stationed behind the Convention Center were directed to hold people back at gunpoint from the foodstuffs locked in the refrigerators there– even though food not used immediately was destined to spoil in the appalling heat.)

People who managed to somehow make it to the Naval Support Facility were turned away roughly; people who trudged over the Mississippi River Bridge were met by police officers who shot over their heads to keep them from crossing. The Red Cross was forbidden to enter the devastated city, because it was thought that relief supplies would just slow the evacuation.

You heard the rumors, and you might even have believed them. There was NOT an epidemic of rapes at the Superdome or the Convention Center. Not a single person was murdered in either location – unless you count the numerous elderly and disabled who died from dehydration and from lack of medication as murders, which I guess in a way they were. There were NO snipers shooting at rescue helicopters. News outlets that blared the rumors on front pages printed the retractions on back pages, if at all.

White people filmed leaving closed shops with armloads of goods were said to be “gathering supplies,” while black folks were “looting.” Middle class white people who refused to leave the city were bravely protecting their property; black and brown folks who refused to leave were suspect as thieves. The majority-black prisoners at Parish Prison were deserted by guards and left to drown or starve or both. While Third World countries like Indonesia (Indonestia!) offered aid, our president remained on vacation.

While loss of property crossed both race and class lines, and obviously hurt the poor and working class harder than the middle and upper classes, who died, for the most part, did not. Katrina's dead are overwhelmingly from the poorest and most oppressed groups in the city. Even recovery has its race and class aspects – almost all of the white upper and middle class neighborhoods are being rebuilt without argument or serious controversy, no matter how low-lying, while poor and working class black neighborhoods are up for debate. “Gee, should those people be allowed to go back there?”

Despite the slow pace of recovery and the lack of support from the federal government, we New Orleanians, black and white and brown and yellow, young and old, native and newcomer, we persevere. We love our city, we treasure our culture, we refuse to cooperate in our own erasure. We keep on keepin’ on. With the help of good folks from all over, we rebuild our churches, our homes, our neighborhoods. And we send those dedicated volunteers home newly christened as New Orleanians wherever they live, linked in solidarity with us. This is the way all change comes and all reconciliation – people crossing over the categories that separate them, linking together to make things better.

You can go to the Greater New Orleans UU website to find out more and to discover ways your congregation can be part of of the renewal of Unitarian Universalism in the Crescent City.

Thank you for all the ways you are marching with us.