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This story was corrected to reflect the ramifications of Katrina on the 2006 New Orleans mayor election, not the 2004 presidential campaign.

A week after Hurricane Katrina, rapper Kanye West condemned President Bush's slow response to disaster relief, making headlines by stating on an NBC special that "George Bush doesn't care about black people." NBC quickly issued a statement dissociating the network from the rapper's comments. One year after the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history claimed more than 1,000 lives, the nation reflects on the federal response to Katrina and the different way people of color were treated in its aftermath. Was Kanye West right?

Your answer, statistically speaking, depends on your race or ethnicity. Public opinion on this issue shows the difference in perception among the races. Fifty-three percent of blacks and 30 percent of Latinos say Bush does not care about black people, compared with 19 percent of whites, according to an October 2005 Foundation for Ethnic Understanding poll of 1,338 people.

It's clear that public perceptions are divided along racial lines. People of color are more likely than whites to say that race played a factor in the federal response to Katrina, a disaster-relief effort many people of color believe would have been expedited had the affected communities been white (See Charts Below). People of color comprise more than 70 percent of the population in New Orleans, where the median household income is $31,369, more than $13,000 below the U.S. median income, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Race has played a significant role in regional politics. Think back to the 2006 mayorial election. Millions of Americans were displaced by Hurricane Katrina, but Louisiana voters still wanted to cast their ballots. It was a statement connecting them to their home, Ted Shaw, director-counsel and president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense and Educational Fund (NAACPLDF), said at a Princeton University lecture this June. When the LDF tried to construct out-of-state polling sites for displaced Louisianians, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) refused to release a list of displaced voters. But the discriminatory implications surrounding Hurricane Katrina transcend even the right to vote.

Blacks were labeled "refugees" and depicted as "looters" in mainstream media coverage, compared with whites, who were called "survivors." Bush initially suspended the Davis-Bacon Act during post-Katrina rebuilding, which requires prevailing wages be set for public-works projects and contracting. Since there was no affirmative action, black contractors were underbid by Mexican workers, many of whom were undocumented, said Shaw, and exploited by Bush's lifting of the labor laws.   

At the time, members of the Congressional Black Caucus called the federal response dysfunctional. Not much has changed since then, according to a report released today by the Committee on Homeland Security.
 
"The administration's irresponsible contracting processes have cost taxpayers billions of dollars," Rep. Bob Etheridge, D-N.C., the ranking member of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Investigations, said in a statement. "This is not only about saving taxpayers money, it's about ensuring that FEMA gets the job done. A year after Hurricane Katrina hit, the damage is still not cleaned up in the Gulf Coast, and these contracting processes are partly to blame," he said.

The report highlights more than $7 billion in contracts, most of which was wasted taxpayer dollars and philanthropic contributions because of FEMA's lack of preparation and staffing shortages, which the report notes still are problems today.

"This is a stark reminder of the federal government’s failures of organization, imagination, and mitigation, which left our communities in the Gulf Coast out to dry last year. Sadly, when it comes to catastrophic planning, this administration has been pennywise and pound foolish. Worse yet, the small businesses in or near communities hard hit by the storm were never afforded the opportunity to rebuild their own communities,” said Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security.

Lessons Learned in the Aftermath

"After coming to grips with the human tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, one can see a wealth of lessons to be learned from the devastation," David Dellacca, assistant professor of computer and information technology, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, said in a statement.

What has the Bush administration learned in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina? Not much, in terms of emergency preparedness. Consider the situation in Southern California, for example—the metropolitan area has more than 300 faults capable of producing large-scale earthquakes and other disasters such as tsunamis and floods.

Los Angeles received $26 million in homeland-security funding last year, making it the highest-funded California county and the second-highest in the nation. But area officials are concerned that the poor, most of whom are black and Latino, still will be left behind. 

"I feel like it's a time bomb waiting to happen, and we're going to get caught in the middle," Oscar Garcia, former president of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council for Lincoln Heights, told Color Lines, a national newsmagazine on race and politics. "If we ever had a disaster on the scale of Hurricane Katrina, we'd run into the same situation. Do you know the city plan if there were a disaster? I have no idea. I see it as a fend for yourself. The city hasn't told us where to go for help. The people that would suffer the most would be the poorest."

"I think that the message has come out very clear from what was seen with the victims of Katrina: Do not be dependent on resources around you and do not expect that someone will come," added Anjelica Salas, executive director of the Center for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

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