In August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina vigorously tore apart the U.S. Gulf Coast Region killing at least 1500 people, ranking at the third deadliest hurricane in United States history. Author of Survival and Death in New Orleans, Patrick Sharkey (2007), looked specifically at data on New Orleans residents that perished during Katrina in an attempt to look at the communities that were most affected by this unfortunate disaster. The storm took the largest toll on the elderly population and by African Americans, who he argued were overrepresented in comparison to whites. The toll was not only physical but mentally damaging as well, due to the overwhelming amount of loss to their homes, family members, pets, and childhood neighborhoods in which …show more content…
In contrary, Sharkey acknowledges that the Knight Ridder Newspaper published a report that found that Blacks represented only a small majority of those who had passed away from Katrina despite the fact that they make up a large majority of the population that was affected the most. (Sharkey 2007) Therefore data used in Sharkey’s analysis uses descriptions of people and the communities that were directly affected by Katrina as a basis for sociological understand of survival and deaths caused by the storm. His findings concluded that, the storm hit New Orleans’s black communities hardest and found that African Americans were disproportionately likely to die in Katrina and were more likely to remain missing. (Sharkey 2007) This is also known as “geography of risk” (Sharkey 2007) as social characteristics are imbalanced and the fact that low income could have made it more difficult to evacuate the city, especially for those without cars or who were unable to get transportation. The government’s lack of organization created extra chaos for those with vehicles as they tried to flee their homes. Since it was decided last minute that the city needed to be evacuated, citizens flooding the streets in a panic for survival. Despite the media reports of racism in mostly white areas of Louisiana, Freudenburg et al. (2009) notes that hundreds of white
In Left to Chance the authors: Pam Jenkins, Steve Kroll-Smith, and Vern Baxter attempt to fill a book with details from the events leading up to and the aftermath of hurricane Katrina without explicitly talking about race. This is a new take on writing about hurricane Katrina because most books and articles out there use race as a backbone in describing how devastating the storm was. This decision was beneficial to the overall message of the book because even though the authors never brought up race, the people who were interviewed brought it up on their own volition, which consequently brought the issue of race along for the ride in the entirety of the book without the authors never having to explicitly say, “because they were black.” This perceived notion that race was a huge piece in the puzzle that was the newly decimated New Orleans, shows that even though there is a book that existed in all intents and purposes to NOT focus on race, race was obviously a very prevalent reason in why African Americans suffered the worse in the storm. Furthermore, the authors made an intelligent choice in deciding to choose two economically different black neighborhoods to focus their book on instead of writing about two poor, black neighborhoods, two white neighborhoods, or one white and one black neighborhood. The reason for this is because the two economically different black neighborhoods prove that it wasn’t just a monetary reason for why African Americans were so devastated by the
Social neglect is one of the causes that are responsible for the deaths in her community. Throughout Ward’s memoir she explains how her community was constantly neglected economically and socially which impacted the citizens. “They gave the violence of New Orleans many names” (4). New Orleans is a symbol for social neglect and represents the process of racism. The city is branded a violent place because of the supposable threats made against White people. All of the blame is automatically put onto black people as they are constantly stereotyped to be responsible for all the problems. All the stereotypes eventually evolve into discrimination as people of color are given unfair advantages, which resulted in racism. The social neglect also affected other individuals socially. “It’s not uncommon for young Black men to drop out here” (26). Social neglect also affected young black men especially since they were never given the hope or
Race and class identity of various groups of people render a great deal of influence on the experience one faces after a natural disaster. Unfortunately, oppression comes along with the quality of life for poor and middle classes. Thus, the experiences of higher and lower social classes are vastly different in terms of physical and psychological effects on the people. Higher social classes have the ability to restore any damages caused from a natural disaster in a timely manner, such as Hurricane Matthew. On the contrary, those people of the lower economic and social classes affected by the hurricane in Haiti, Bahamas, and Jamaica this past weekend will take a number of months or even years to rebuild their prior lifestyles. On pg. 4 in the
In this paper I read the Essay that Abe Louise Young wrote about “The Voice of Katrina Part One”. In this Essay at its core is about Hurricane Katrina, which was a massive hurricane that hit in 2005. It caused massive damage and destruction along the Gulf coast from Florida to Texas. Hurricane Katrina will always be remembered for hitting New Orleans, Louisiana, when the levee system failed leaving 80% of the city flooded and destroyed. Hitting the worst parts of New Orleans such as the 9th ward, already being one of the poorest areas in Mississippi. Much of the Essay talks about the people of New Orleans, Abe being a new graduate started Alive in Truth: The New Orleans Disaster Oral History and Memory Project, her goal she state’s is to
It is pretty poignant, yet honest to say that the hurricane Katrina has long derived an almost obsessional attention from Natasha writer. In “Beyond Katrina: A meditation of the Mississippi Gulf Coast”, Tretheway has purposely pictured the devastation scenario from witnesses’ narratives; hence her story could speak for many stories of people who are less visible, whom we cannot see struggling against the aftermath - the stories we may not know about how tenacious the return of Gulf Coast communities was from those tremendous sufferings they miserably faced up to.
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast at daybreak, “pummeling a region that included the fabled city of New Orleans and heaping damage on neighboring Mississippi. In all, more than 1,700 people were killed and hundreds of thousands of others displaced.” (Laforet, New York Times)
Hurricane Katrina was a devastating disaster that has affected many people in New Orleans. The communication broke down hours after Katrina because of the unexpected fast winds and floods that broke down “3 million phone lines and 1,000 cellular towers in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.”( Joch ). Because of the millions of phone lines that were broken down, contacting the government for help was difficult hours after hurricane Katrina. Not only that, the people of New Orleans underestimated the power of Hurricane Katrina causing many to be “ stranded with no food or water” (Narrator, “The Storm”,PBS).
In December of 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, tearing through the levee systems, and resulting in massive flooding that eventually covered 80% of New Orleans (1), leading to the most significant number of deaths by the storm. As images of Hurricane Katrina were displayed on front pages and television sets across the counry, Katrina became a strategic research site for sociological theory and research of how identity shapes a natural disaster (1). In this essay, I want to explore the fate of New Orleans. How will climate change affect human populations and which human populations will it affect? To do this, I will need to review both scientific and socially scientific papers to understand what the future of New Orleans and southern Louisiana will look like. Though this concept is technically broad for the limitations of this paper, I will review several pieces of literature to begin to gain an understanding of the social and ecological situations at play.
The Washington Times opens with a statement describing the path of Hurricane Katrina and also shares the known death toll. This article gives the audience more of a general overview of the first known effects of the hurricane, without having too many newly revealed facts. The article has quotes from the governors of Mississippi, which gives the reader a feeling that
On August 29th of 2005, a category 3 hurricane, dubbed Hurricane Katrina, hit the Gulf Coast of the United States. It brought winds of 100 to 140 miles per hour, and stretched more than 400 miles across. New Orleans had its first mandatory evacuation ordered the day before, while listing the Superdome as a shelter for those who couldn’t leave town. More than 70 percent evacuated, while the rest stayed at their homes, or took to shelters, to wait out the storm. The aftermath of Katrina was felt in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, but New Orleans was affected the most by far. In the end, more than 2000 were either seriously injured or killed, while those who survived were very short on food, water, first aid, and had very few areas for shelter. A large reason the storm was so devastating was the fact that the storm was able to cover almost 80 percent of the entire city under a large amount of water. Before the storm hit, the city used levee systems and flood walls to protect itself from being flooded. During the storm, however, many failures in the levee system caused close to 80 percent of the flooding covering the city and the nearby parish. Many know that the levee system failed but few in the public know that the major reason it had failed was because of the incomplete design. The disaster
Hurricane Katrina struck the city of New Orleans, Louisiana on August 29th, 2005. The events that followed would leave the whole nation in shock until this day. One of the major topics of discussion after this disaster was whether or not the government's slow reaction time had anything to do with the fact that New Orleans is sixty-seven percent African American. As helicopters circled a wasteland that was once a major tourist attraction, the racism of the Deep South, thought to be extinct, proved it was only dormant. The same racism against African Americans that could be seen on Bourbon Street in the months prior to the hurricane reared its ugly head once more in Gretna, LA and was pointed out on live television by rapper Kanye West.
Futhermore, crime in New Orleans increased drastically. On September 1, 2005, victims of Hurricane Katrina reperted crimes of rape and domestic violence. The violent crimes left corpses lying on the ground everywhere in the city. “We have individuals who
Hurricane Katrina resulted in massive loss of life and billions of dollars in property damage. There are many lessons worth learning from this event. Finger pointing started before the event was over. Most of the focus on Hurricane Katrina was on its impact on New Orleans; however, the storm ravaged a much wider area than that. This paper will briefly summarize the event, the impact on the city of New Orleans and the lessons learned to ensure preparedness today.
As Hurricane Katrina ravaged the South and drowned large parts of New Orleans this past September, the ugly reality of our nation's continuing problem with class, poverty, and race became apparent. Many Americans began to question the possibility of racism being a deciding factor in the fate of many New Orleans citizens who were black and who lived in the poorest, most low-lying portion of the city, the Ninth Ward. Many, including First Lady Laura Bush, denounce critics who say race played a role in the federal government's slow response to the victims of Katrina. While it is possible that the government's slow response to the disaster was not directly due to racism, there are many unanswered questions suggesting the protection of the city
Environmental problems are something which belongs to nature or known as “Mother Earth” [13]. Nature was created to help people survive from gathering foods until build a house. This phenomenon happens continuously without thinking how much damage that nature has because human’s fault. Nature gradually becomes worse and animal’s life in danger. People who are aware of the importance of nature react. Those people do several ways to save the environment. Although these efforts can return back the environment, these efforts only can be hold temporarily. This problem happens because those people who are aware of the environment only slightly; for remaining, there are people either do not know or do not care about the nature. People’s efforts