October 27, 2006
Class and Race In America: The Legacy of Hurricane Katrina
The picture to the left of a father using the American flag as a blanket to shield his son points to the contradictions and complexity of the United States when it comes to dealing with race and class together. Images such as this broadcast across the nation in the wake of Hurricane Katrina illustrate the economic stratification and racial inequality that still exists in a country that refuses to come to terms with its history of slavery and economic disparity between the rich and the poor. Spike Lee’s four hour documentary about Hurricane Katrina, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, serves to highlight this disparity, as well as the system wide failure of the government on all levels, and gives a voice to the survivors and victims of the storm. Lee interviewed over 100 people in producing his film. As Allsion Samules writes for Newsweek magazine August 21/August 28, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14322933/site/newsweek/, Lee interviewed, “the mayor of New Orleans, the governor of Louisiana, Sean Penn, Soledad O’Brien, Kayne West, engineers historians, journalists, radio DJs–even the guy who spotted the vice president during a post-Katrina photo-op and told him to ‘Go f— yourself Mr. Cheney’” (94). But Samuels is quick to point out that the voice with the most impact comes from Phyllis Montant LeBlanc, a resident of the Lower Ninth Ward who noted the questions she posed to Lee when he asked her to be a part of the documentary, “‘Are you going to tell the whole story and make it clear that all black people aren’t poor, ignorant looters?’ And then I aksed if I could cuss. When he said yes to both, I said, ‘Hot damn, we’ve got a deal!’” (94).
Hurricane Katrina brought to the forefront a history of neglect and refusal to look at the social, political and cultural problems stemming from decades of classism and racism in the United States. As pictures such as the one above of a woman waiting outside the New Orleans Convention Center wrapped in an American flag blanket circulated around the country and around the world Americans were forced to look at an American legacy that was not about democracy, freedom and equality but about the denial of these American ideals.
Bibliography:
Samuels, Allison. “Spike’s Katrina.” Newsweek 21/28 Aug. 2006: 94-96.