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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2017
Harvey racial optics much different than Katrina
Tale of two hurricanes
“In Harvey, nobody
is talking about
race. It’s just, ‘What
do you need?’ ”
By ERRIN HAINES WHACK
Associated Press
The charges of racism that swirled after
Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans
12 years ago have yet to surface as Houston
recovers from the floods unleashed by Harvey.
Houston was hit as the nation roiled from
a white supremacist rally that turned deadly
Aug. 12 in Charlottesville, Virginia. The vio-
lence left in its wake deep divisions primed
by President Donald Trump’s assertion that
“many sides” were to blame, producing heated
debates about Confederate statues and whether
they are important historical markers or sym-
bols of hate that should be removed.
Those raw tensions didn’t boil over even
as Trump provided another potential spark by
pardoning Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who
was convicted of ignoring a judge’s order to
stop targeting Latinos suspected of being in the
country illegally. Trump made the move just as
Harvey made landfall Aug. 25 and took aim at
Houston, where Hispanics make up about 44
percent of the population.
When Katrina struck on Aug. 29, 2005,
New Orleans had 500,000 residents, nearly 70
percent of them black. Americans were hor-
rified by images of people stranded on roof-
tops and scrounging for food and water. There
were appalling conditions in the Superdome,
the shelter of last resort for thousands and a
hell-scape for those too poor to leave ahead of
the storm.
The face of Katrina was largely black and
poor. Within days, Katrina’s death toll was into
the hundreds. By contrast, Harvey’s death toll
hovered around 60, though it’s expected to rise
as waters recede.
Many cited the heavy death toll follow-
ing Katrina, and the slow, inadequate govern-
ment response, as evidence that New Orleans’
poor, black residents were considered dispos-
able. “I hate the way they portray us in the
media,” rapper Kanye West declared during
a Red Cross telethon, adding that President
George W. Bush “doesn’t care about black
people,” a sentiment that resonated with many
African-Americans.
Devin Coleman
34-year-old who moved to Houston
from the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans
just before Katrina hit
Urban sprawl
AP Photo/Matt Rourke
Antoinette Porcarello views her flood-damaged possessions piled in the front yard in
the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in Houston.
Racially diverse
By comparison, Houston — a sprawl-
ing city of more than 2.4 million — is more
racially diverse, with blacks and whites each
accounting for about a quarter of the popula-
tion. Because there was no mandatory evacu-
ation, people of all races and classes remained
in the storm’s path, not just folks who couldn’t
afford to leave.
That made for diverse images in the scenes
of boat rescues and families huddling in shel-
ters, said New Orleans native Mtangulizi San-
yika, a retired professor and social activist who
left his New Orleans neighborhood the day
before Katrina hit and now lives in Houston.
“In New Orleans, we had a human tragedy
on our hands that obviously, black people were
the primary victims,” Sanyika said. “The flood
here … was an equal opportunity flood.”
George Washington University sociologist
Gregory Squires said “there’s no question the
optics feel different” in Houston.
“What we’re not seeing in Houston are the
hundreds of black people being stuck in a build-
ing or stopped on a highway and blocked from
getting out of the city,” said Squires, co-edi-
tor of the book, “There Is No Such Thing as
a Natural Disaster: Race, Class and Katrina.”
“Nobody is saying that Donald Trump doesn’t
like black people.”
In New Orleans, as the levees broke, the
water rose and people struggled to survive as
media reports of looting depicted storm vic-
tims as criminals. Those who were eventu-
ally able to relocate to other cities were labeled
“refugees,” a term usually reserved for people
fleeing one country for another.
AP Photo/David J. Phillip
In this photo combination, evacuees wade down Tidwell Road in Houston on Aug. 28,
2017, top, as floodwaters from Tropical Storm Harvey rise, and a car drives down the
same road on Tuesday, bottom, after the water receded.
AP Photo/Gerald Herbert
Members of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, the Florida Fish and
Wildlife Conservation Commission, and the Louisiana National Guard help rescue with
elderly people from the Golden Years Assisted Living home, which was flooded from
Hurricane Harvey in Orange, Texas.
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The narrative around Katrina was urban
neglect — years of disinvestment in infra-
structure affecting a largely minority popula-
tion. With Harvey, the focus is more on urban
sprawl and how development may have com-
pounded a natural disaster.
“Katrina was kind of a crime scene, with
implications against local, state and federal
government on how they were failing poor
people; in Houston, it’s kind of universal,”
said Rice University historian Douglas Brin-
kley, author of “The Great Deluge: Hurricane
Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi
Gulf Coast.”
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, who is
black and grew up in a lower-income area of
the city, noted that the George R. Brown Con-
vention Center where 10,000 people took shel-
ter was far different from what those in New
Orleans encountered.
“I think people have felt comfortable,” he
said. “This is not their place of choice. They
would rather be at home. But we try to treat
people with respect. They are our guests. They
are our fellow Houstonians.”
Devin Coleman, 34, moved to Houston
from the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans
just before Katrina hit. He lost his aunt and his
grandmother in the storm. He was sheltered at
Houston’s convention center for nearly a week
and was amazed at how helpful people were.
“If you weren’t white or had your own
money, it’s almost as if they didn’t want you
there,” Coleman recalled of the environment
during Katrina. “In Harvey, nobody is talking
about race. It’s just, ‘What do you need?’”
Al Sistrunk, 67, echoed Coleman’s senti-
ments, praising the city’s response to Harvey
while waiting in line to file a claim with the
Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“Here in Houston, it’s everybody,” Sistrunk
said. “We’re getting housing, people are get-
ting food, people are getting material they need
for their houses. They rescued everybody, they
weren’t rescuing white people first or black
people first, at least that’s what they show on
the news.”
Financial disparities
Texas Southern University urban planning
professor Robert D. Bullard warned what hap-
pens next could uncover racial disparities.
Homeowners of color may lack the finan-
cial resources or networks to rebuild as quickly,
if at all, he said. On the city’s more affluent and
white west side, Bullard noted people are “hir-
ing contractors and starting to rebuild.”
Bullard, regarded as the father of “envi-
ronmental racism,” also pointed out that poor
and minority residents were most likely to
have lived in proximity to the industrial areas
affected by the storm. Pollution and chem-
ical spills could affect those communities
disproportionately.
Squires predicted as the scope of the dam-
age is surveyed the racial impact will grow.
“Rich and poor alike were affected by the
storm, but I strongly doubt that these groups
were affected equally,” he said. “The optics
clearly are not as racial here as they were in
New Orleans. But I think we need to distin-
guish between the optics and the reality.”
Juliet Linderman and Juan A. Lozano con-
tributed to this report from Houston. Whack
reported from Philadelphia.
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