New Orleans is bowl shaped city, surrounded by Mississippi river, Industrial canal and the lake-an extension of the sea of Gulf of Mexico. New Orleans is a historic city best known for Jazz and Blue music associated mainly with the Black Americans. The famous jazz musician Louis Armstrong hailed from this city. Before 27th August 2005 the city had many night clubs and casinos that attracted tourists both from America and abroad. One of the features of the Black Society there is that their dead are taken for burial with full blowing brass band and dancing entourage. The passing of spirit to another world is seen to be a joyful event and not a cause for mourning. This, in a way, reflects a sense of contentment and resignation to fate-a virtue shared with the poor of most of the third world.

The privileged and well off white population in all the major cities of America has moved away from inner cities and lives in posh localities in the suburbs. The inner cities have turned into ghettos where the poor and the Blacks live. New Orleans is no exception. It has a population mix of 67 per cent Blacks to 27 per cent white. The well off live on high ground while the majority lives in shallow city.

A powerful category 4 Hurricane Katrina hit southern states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama on August 27, 2005. New Orleans bore the brunt of it. As if high wind and rain was not enough the levees gave way to lashing waves. The bowl started filling it up fast. Before long the low lying areas were completely submerged under water. While most of the people with transport and money left the city, many more mainly black poor, destitute, homeless were left behind. They had no means to escape to safer grounds. Some made it to Superdome where the number swelled to well over 10,000. Soon the number, hunger, congestion and unhygienic conditions started taking their share of life. Few elderly and infirm could not take the stress and died. Some died sitting in their wheel chairs while others leaned against wall or simply slid down and breathed their last.

In this day of instant reporting television crew of news channels did not miss any opportunity to report ‘live’ many faces of the disaster that had struck the fateful people. The federal government seemed oblivious to the plight of hundreds of thousands of its citizens for nearly a week. There exits Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) whose jobs it is to coordinate assistance to needy in precisely such a situation. It has responded to nearly 150 emergencies declared by the federal government in the near past-mainly emergencies related to terrorism- where fast action is a prerequisite. But no one seemed to have informed FEMA about

the tragedy that had struck the unfortunate people New Orleans.

For five days there was no federal help for the stranded citizens. They had no water, gas or electricity and had to rely on whatever little food they normally would have left out of their weekly shopping. Others, in desperation for survival went on looting the food stores.

The ones left in their homes had no one to rescue. With rising water they moved from ground floor to first floor and then attic to escape. Alas! Many lost their lives due to suffocation. Rescue teams, when they did come, found bodies floating. The help that finally came was grossly inadequate. A few helicopters picking people from their attics one at a time was nowhere near the massive effort that was required. Hundreds of thousands have been made homeless and displaced. Commenting on the “staggering incompetence” of the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina Senator Mary Landrieu said “Washington rolled the dice and Louisiana lost.

"Some ten thousand people were feared dead according to news reports. But then a ban on reporting was imposed. Prominent among those reporting were the CNN and Newsweek. With media virtually silenced the death toll was officially declared to be around 1,000.

The Newsweek remarked, “The United States remains the world’s most productive economy. It outspends all other countries combined on defence.”---- “This is the aspect of America that foreigners find hardest to comprehend-seemingly deliberate choice to expose its citizens to jeopardy.”

The Economist called it “The shaming of America.” It stated that local incompetence exasperated the disaster: in New Orleans Parish, for instance, where 60,000 households do not own a car, hundreds of city buses which might have shipped out stranded people were left to be swamped by rising waters. Where were the higher ups of the administration? The President was confused and appeared incapable of taking decision. Dick Cheney, the vice president remained on holidays in Wyoming. Condoleeza Rice, the highest placed Black person had gone to see Broadway show, “Spamalot”, ‘while New Orleans poor looked at flood water’ The Economist remarked.

How the American elite thinks is amply reflected by the comments made by former First Lady Barbara Bush, mother of President George W Bush. On seeing the hurricane refugees in Astrodome in Dallas she said, “What I am hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were under privileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.” One anchorman at a television show candidly remarked, “She has been rich too long.”

Back in New Orleans lacklustre approach to levee repair was almost abandoned before another hurricane by the name of Rita hit the area three weeks later in September. The levees had already given way and the city was inundated with water again on a larger scale as no one was trying to stop it.

Naomi Kleine writing in Guardian London states that there are at least 11,600 empty apartments and houses in New Orleans. If Jefferson Parish is included, that number soars to 23,270. That means that out of the 200,000 New Orleans poorest and permanently homeless roughly 70,000 could move back to the city, alongside returning white homeowners, without a single new structure being built. On the other hand the driest areas of the city are the whitest and that’s where the relief money is going. Few areas, like the Algerian quarter, that are black, lack transport facilities. No money has been allocated for this.

The damage and destruction of low lying homes is already being seen as an ‘opportunity’ for “21st century thinking’. That means planning and development for mixed income housing rather than for those who have been rendered homeless. Kleine quoted Mark Drennen, as saying, “I honestly don’t know, and I don’t think anyone knows, how they (Poor Black) are going to fit in.” He is the president and CEO of Greater New Orleans Inc., “New Orleans is already displaying signs of a demographic shift so dramatic that some evacuees describe it as ethnic cleansing,” writes Kleine.

What the world witnessed during and after Katrina and Rita was that there was reluctance on the part of white administration to extend assistance to its black population. It was as if they wished they were not there. The actions of the so called civil society exposed its bias. There was clearly discrimination based on colour and class.

What must haunt the conscious of Americans, in the coming days and months, is the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Black Americans coming out on streets everywhere looking for food and shelter in a country where twelve of the richest persons in the world earn more than 162 countries put together. So much riches and such poverty only goes on to show the demise of a society.

Racial prejudice is not a phenomenon confined to just the United States. The whole of Western society is infested with it. In Britain, Enoch Powel, a long term member parliament, cried wolf about racial riots and ‘rivers of blood’ until he died. He always pointed at the Asian immigrants for a future so bleak with immigrants as to revolt. The all white National Front and Skinheads have been regularly showing their racial bias and committing isolated but noticeable horrendous acts of assault and murder since long. The events of 7/7 in London have brought police prejudice towards the non-white to boil. An innocent Brazilian young man was killed under suspicion by the police in broad day light. A white man under similar circumstances would most probably have not met the same fate. Incidences of abuse and attack on British migrant community have increased many folds since July 7, 2005.

France’s far right Front National and Foreign Legion may be in minority but does not spare any opportunity to create trouble for immigrants mainly coming from Algeria. In August and September 2005 a number of incidences of arson in dilapidated building of Paris resulted in over 50 deaths. These buildings lacked even basic amenities such as electricity and running water. Neither the civic authority nor the charitable organisations had noticed their existence. Such neglect in a society that is portrayed as caring was hard to imagine until it surfaced.

In Germany neo-Nazi groups and outfits like Kampf-gruppe Prince Eugene ( Prince Eugene Battle Group) often make life difficult, to say the least, for the Turkish immigrant workers. Cases of arson and beating became all too common in the recent past. In some areas of Amsterdam in Belgium and Copenhagen in Denmark are no longer safe places for non-white to walk alone at night, and at times even during the day. In many cases cars have been burnt, clinics attacked with petrol bombs and threatening notes delivered to homes of immigrant community at large. Italian government has been all too eager to please America since 9/11, perhaps for the sack of protection of Italian mafia in the States, that it has often picked on innocent Arabs and Pakistanis as suspected terrorists. This kind of official attitude only goes on to encourage Italians at large to be often unkind even to tourists.

The Netherlands’ extreme right Centrim–Partij has been playing the racial theme to the hilt that has been the cause of street fighting and killings.

The Western society’s religious bias surfaced after 9/11. Katrina has blown open their prejudices based on class and race. All their rhetoric about human rights and equal opportunity are no longer selling. They have nothing good to offer to the rest of the world anymore. Western civilization is crashing right in front of our own eyes. It appears that the nature is simply accelerating that process to its finish.

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