From Gulf to Gulf

[Elizabeth Brandt]

Dear Colleagues:

As a U.S. scholar, I concur with this message, but I want to add several other critical factors in addition to poverty and race:  gender, and disability.  The majority of the poor are women and children.  If you are watching CNN and other news sources you can see the large numbers of women and children among the most wretched of the victims in New Orleans. Throughout the world, women and children are overrepresented among the poor. 

Today, my local newspaper showed a huge front page picture of women in line for a bus with their mouths open, looking angry. The headline said something like "Loss of Control"; those in the picture were predominately African American  and female.  The focus was on looting and gunshots and not on the failure of relief efforts after five days to deliver food, water, and medical care to the thousands starving, dehydrating, suffering, and dying in the downtown New Orleans in the Convention Center and the Astrodome .  Yet nearby, were luxury hotels, not one of which opened their doors to the homeless. The hospitals have not yet been evacuated and have patients dying from lack of food and water and power to run life-saving equipment. 

Only today have some relief efforts begun to reach people in the Convention Center and only because of the efforts of CNN and National Public Radio,  which showcased the abysmal failure of the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the head of Homeland Security, both of whom claimed not to know that there were thousands of people without access to any help at all in downtown New Orleans. 

As scholars, I think we do have a responsibility to examine the media coverage.  The newspapers seem to be focusing on the security issue, blaming the victims and painting them as out of control looters, while the all news television shows are showing the desperation and despair of the victims. Apparently no provisions were made to help any of the poor, the sick, and the disabled evacuate, perhaps because they are predominately African-American.  They are the most distressed because they had no resources to get out of town, then or now.  What has been happening makes me deeply angry and ashamed.  We need to record that these people were simply left to suffer in unconscionable ways and the agencies whose responsibility it was allowed it to happen.  We all need to use our expertise to help them and not allow them to be painted as out of control lawbreakers, but as people desperate for survival.

Elizabeth Brandt
Professor, 250 Anth
Arizona State University
Box 872402
School of Human Evolution and Social Change
Tempe, AZ 85287-2402
(480) 965-5992 My Office
(480) 965-6215 Main  Office
(480) 965-7671 Fax
Reality is only an illusion, albeit a very persistant one---Einstein