There is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster: Race, Class, and Hurricane Katrina

by George Washington University;

• ISBN13: 9780415954877
• ISBN10: 0415954878
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2006-08-21
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

i There is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster /i is the first critical scholarly book on the catastrophic impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans. The disaster will go down in record as one of the worst in American history, not least because of the government's generally inept and cavalier response. But it's also a huge story for other obvious reasons. Firstly, the impact of the hurricane was uneven, and race and class (and tied to this, poverty) were deeply implicated in the unevenness. It was not by accident that the poorest and blackest neighborhoods were the ones that were buried under water. Secondly, the response underscored the impoverishment of social policy (or what passes for it) in both George W. Bush's America and more specifically the Republican-dominated South. Thirdly, New Orleans is not just any place - it's a great American city with a rich and unique history. People care about the place and what happens there. Fourthly, what happened and what will happen there can tell us a great dealabout the state of urban and regional planning in contemporary America. br The book, edited by two eminent scholars/authors, gathers together ten excellent scholars to put forth a multifaceted portrait of the social implications of the disaster. And the disaster was primarily social in nature, as the title reminds us. The book covers the response to the disaster and the roles that race and class played, its impact on housing, the historical context of urban disasters in America, the nature of contemporary metropolitan planning, what the hurricane has taught us about planning, the role of the vast prison system in all of this, the future of economic development, the roles of business and the media, and how the hurricane disproportionately impacted female headed households. In total, it offers a critical and comprehensive social portrait of the disaster's catastrophic effects on New Orleans.

Table of Contents

Foreword	vii
Mary Frances Berry
Acknowledgments	ix
1 Pre-Katrina, Post-Katrina	1	(12)
Chester Hartman and Gregory D. Squires
2 A Matter of Choice: Historical Lessons for Disaster Recovery	13	(24)
Michael P. Powers
3 Oral History, Folklore, and Katrina	37	(22)
Alan H. Stein and Gene B. Preuss
4 Towards a Transformative View of Race: The Crisis and Opportunity of Katrina	59	(26)
john a. powell, Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Daniel W. Newhart, and Eric Stiens
5 Abandoned Before the Storms: The Glaring Disaster of Gender, Race, and Class Disparities in the Gulf	85	(18)
Avis A. Jones-DeWeever and Heidi Hartmann
6 Katrina and the Politics of Later Life	103	(18)
Margaret Morganroth Gullette
7 Where Is Home? Housing for Low-Income People After the 2005 Hurricanes	121	(46)
Sheila Crowley
8 Reclaiming New Orleans' Working-Class Communities	167	(18)
Robert O. Zdenek, Ralph Scott, Jane Malone, and Brian Gumm
9 A New Kind of Medical Disaster in the United States	185	(12)
Evangeline (Vangy) Franklin
10 Double Jeopardy: Public Education in New Orleans Before and After the Storm	197	(18)
Michael Casserly
11 An Old Economy for the "New" New Orleans? Post-Hurricane Katrina Economic Development Efforts	215	(18)
Robert K. Whelan
12 From Poverty to Prosperity: The Critical Role of Financial Institutions	233	(22)
John Taylor and Josh Silver
13 The Role of Local Organizing: House-to-House with Boots on the Ground	255	(16)
Wade Rathke and Beulah Laboistrie
14 Rebuilding A Tortured Past or Creating A Model Future: The Limits and Potentials of Plannng	271	(20)
Peter Marcuse
Contributors	291	(10)
Index	301