WUNRN
USA - DISPARITIES IN AID, WEALTH,
RACE, HEALTH +
NEW ORLEANS POST-KATRINA EXAMPLE -
GENDER
August 29, 2010
While attending a conference in
(WOMENSENEWS)--Recently I
attended a conference on health disparities in communities of color. The
National Health Policy Training Alliance for Communities of Color hosted over
40 journalists of all hues and ethnic origins to convene in
For three days, we sat in the top floor of a
well-appointed hotel in the lovely French Quarter, having a lively discussion
about how we can get better and more thorough coverage of the issues. But it
turns out the real story about health disparities and racial inequities was but
20 minutes away, across the bridge and down
The Lower Ninth Ward was destroyed during Hurricane
Katrina five years ago. The area was the hardest hit when the levees broke and
the low-income community residents were the last to get help. The images of
bodies floating through the water still haunt me.
One would have no idea of what is still going on in the
Lower Ninth Ward by walking through the downtown area of
I've never been one to take things at face value. It is
my experience that in most urban environments there is almost always a tale of
two cities--and the tale of the brown city that exists across the railroad
tracks or the bridge or whatever socioeconomic divide exists in that particular
locale is almost always starkly different.
So when a few of the local community leaders came to
address us, what they had to say about the Lower Ninth Ward was appalling but
not surprising. They said that of the $90 million that the Federal Emergency
Management Agency allocated to rebuilding the city, the Lower Ninth Ward has
not received any money. Nobody has been told a definitive answer as to why.
They said the Lower Ninth Ward only has one working
school for kindergarten through 12th grade. The school has 750 students and a
450-student-long waiting list. There are no hospitals in the area and God help
you if you need emergency care and have to travel across the bridge and across
town to get it. Many displaced residents, they added, would love to return to
the area, but they can't because there are no schools and no real health care
options for the elderly.
The local community leaders expressed their outrage that
tour companies bring busloads of people through the Lower Ninth Ward everyday
to gawk at their despair, yet never share any of their profits or stop to
support local businesses.
On my last day in
But what I mostly saw was the biggest disparity of them
all, the wealth disparity--money given to help those who have and no money to
those who don't. In fact, it is clear that the powers that be have no intention
of rebuilding that community. To them, Katrina has become a tragic opportunity
to rid the city of some of its poorest residents--I mean, really, who wants
them around anyway? Why rebuild so they can return?
Now a new plan for the Lower Ninth Ward is in the works
and its message is clear: Poor blacks need not apply. New developments and
higher rents are on the horizon, but there are no jobs to support them. Even
though blacks built
Kimberly Seals Allers is an
award-winning journalist and editorial director of the Black Maternal Health
project at Women's eNews. A former senior editor at Essence and writer at
Fortune, she is the founder of www.MochaManual.com,
a parenting destination for African Americans, and author of "The Mocha
Manual to a Fabulous Pregnancy" (Amistad/HarperCollins) and two other
Mocha Manual books.