Volunteer’s Account of Transporting Stranded Evacuees from New Orleans, in Aftermath of Katrina
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Related subjects: Extreme Weather Events, Humanitarian Crisis, Hurricane Katrina, U.S. Environment, U.S. History Comments Off
by Robert Zazzali
As I watched the horrible effects of Hurricane Katrina unfold in early September, 2005, I tried to get involved somehow. I think I was one of the lucky ones to squeeze through the general turning away of unqualified and uncredentialed volunteers. At first I was a bit reticent to tell everyone my story. I don’t want to appear self-adulatory and I dread coming off as seeking a pat on the back, but after speaking to a few people I realized that not sharing would be selfish.
It was September 6th, 2005, just days after the Hurricane struck the Gulf Coast and flooding overtook New Orleans. At the time, I was on a job in Joplin, Missouri and had grown restless from watching helplessly as the images of the hurricane’s aftermath repeated themselves on my motel television. I went online and found a link to an organization called Katrina Caravan Rescue. I called the number and left a message. A young woman named Annie Downing called me back and explained Katrina Caravan was merely a grassroots organization thrown together by a few people using Craig’s List and other websites. Their purpose was to find volunteers who could provide transportation to evacuees currently in Houston who secured future shelter but had no way of getting there. Annie was a young mother living in Texas, trying to balance her relief efforts while tending to her infant. In my cell phone I entered her name as “Annie Dispatcher” for in the coming days she was my only link to the family and pertinent information like destinations, routes, etc.
In our first call, she told me she had a family that needed a ride from Baton Rouge to Kansas. The mother was 7 months pregnant and needed desperately to get to her new home. Feeling suddenly unprepared for the responsibility, I was relieved when Annie called back hours later to tell me that the family managed to get a flight. Annie continued to search for a family or group that she could pair with me.
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On September 8th, about 12 hours before I was to drive to Tulsa for my flight back to my apartment in Los Angeles, Annie called to tell me she found someone. I was relieved. I knew that once I left the Midwest, I’d probably lose my opportunity —and inspiration— to help anyone. It was a family of five: Nolan Doyle, his sisters Paulette and Veronica, and Paulette’s two children, Charleisha and Marquis. Annie informed me that the girl was 2 years old and the boy was 11 months. I was to pick them up in Houston and drive them to the north-central part of Louisiana where their auntie lived.
I spoke to Enterprise Rent-A-Car to make sure they had a van and would stay open late enough for me to get it. I’d like to note that two of my co-workers, Prema and Jennifer, were instrumental in making sure I had a car, hotel, and directions to get to Houston. As many of you know, any help I can get with regards to navigation is welcomed and needed. My sense of direction is miserable. When I walk out of a store in a mall, I turn left—regardless of which direction I entered from. Once I drove to my cousins’ home with my little brother. Kevin was 10 or 11 at the time and despite his best efforts of drawing maps for me in the backseat, I managed to stretch a 20 minute drive into a two and a half hour trip.
I finished up working at about 8:00 p.m. and drove to Wal-Mart to pick up water, a few CD’s, and baby seats. The store employees from whom I solicited help looked at me kind of suspiciously when I couldn’t be specific about the size of the kids. I threw the seats in my car, checked out of the hotel and headed west to Tulsa. I got to Enterprise just before 11:00, swapped out for the van and began driving south on the 75. My next destination was a Best Western in Atoka, Oklahoma, a small town 40 miles north of the Texas border.
A couple hours into my drive, I went in the wrong direction after leaving a rest stop. When I got off the freeway to turn back around, I was met by best the southern Oklahoma boondocks had to offer. As my van came to a halt at the stop sign at the end of the dark, desolate road, I was greeted by a pack of wild dogs. There were seven or eight of them—all different breeds, all mangy, and none too happy that I was on their turf. They surrounded me, barking loudly, and their leader was looking right through the windshield at what would have been his best dinner in quite some time. I cautiously stepped on the gas and they pursued the van until I got back on the freeway. They were so intimidating and seemingly cognizant, I felt that if they had enough time they would have figured out how to get inside, maul me, drive the van to meet the rest of their friends and share my leftovers. If you’re ever in that part of Oklahoma and it’s dark, I strongly urge you not to stop.
Atoka welcomed me with a roadside sign that read, “Tomato Peaches and Jelly Relish.” I got to bed at about 3:30, slept for four hours, and was on the road again by 8:30. I hadn’t even made it to Texas when a SUV that was ahead of me suddenly veered off of the road into the grassy ditch of a median, across the three lanes of oncoming traffic, back on to the grass on the other side of the highway, and through a barbwire fence. Even after it started plowing through small trees, the car never dropped below 60 or 70 mph. After barely missing a few large trees, the guy finally rolled to a stop. I pulled over and, along with a trucker who also stopped, tended to the guy. He was bloodied and shaken up, but other than that he was fine. The trucker said he had an important meeting to go (read: “don’t want to be here when the law shows up”) so I hung out with the driver until the police and ambulance arrived. It turns out that the local factory he works in recently began using a new cleaning agent, and the chemicals have been rendering him short of breath and causing him to black out. By all indications, he was sober, but he wasn’t wearing his seatbelt. Had he hit another car, flipped in the median, or hit one of the larger trees, he probably would have been dead. The cops came, I filled out a report, and met his wife. I took the opportunity to tell her how lucky he was that he wasn’t seriously hurt. I also told her that he needs to start wearing his seatbelt. She said she’s tried to tell him but he won’t listen. I told her to try harder.
The closer I got to Houston, the more I realized I had no idea what kind of situation I was walking into. I was pretty sure that the George R. Brown Convention Center was going to be neither the nightmare that the New Orleans Superdome was days earlier nor the dangerous mess that the Houston Astrodome was currently. Nonetheless, the potential reality of the situation started to freak me out a bit. It was compounded when Annie called me to say that Nolan was stressed out because there was no way of me picking him out among the crowd. Visions of Tom Cruise driving a van through a desperate mob in “War of the Worlds” crept into my mind, and I was glad I hadn’t told my parents what I was doing. I stopped at a Taco Bell a couple hours north of my destination and began the pathetic attempts at installing the two baby seats. I called my sister, my cousin and my best friend—all uber parents of varying degrees—for the rules on baby seat installation. If the child isn’t both one year old and over 20 pounds, the seat has to face backwards. Setting up Charleisha’s face-forward seat, though a breeze in comparison to the nightmare of installing Marquez’s face-backward seat, was still a battle. After about 35 minutes in the Bell parking lot I gave up and resigned to hope that Nolan and his sisters could figure it out.
Texas is a big state, so I took the time to more thoroughly the instructions while finishing the last leg of my drive and gained enough confidence to put in the girl’s seat. I pulled over again and gave it another shot. Now I know why parents get so stressed out. Parenting is seriously high stakes. It’s not like you’re hanging curtains or assembling a bookshelf where you can fudge it and cross your fingers. After my second attempt, I was pretty darn sure I put one seat in securely; that thing wasn’t moving even if I drove upside down. Nonetheless, admittedly, I fudged it and crossed my fingers.
At 4:30 in the afternoon, I arrived at the Convention Center. Nolan had called me from a borrowed cell phone twenty minutes earlier but I missed the call. “Yeah, Robby, this is me, Nolan Doyle, the guy you’re supposed to be coming to get from Houston Texas. I would like for you to give me a call back at this number…” I returned his call but I got some other guy’s voicemail. I called Annie and she told me to just meet him outside the Center. He knew I was close and was going to wait outside for me. When I got there, I couldn’t find him anywhere. I was a quite nervous, walking around with a notebook paper with Nolan’s name on it. I walked back and forth across the front of the building feeling like a cross between a desperate Grateful Dead fan seeking tickets and a limousine driver awaiting an unmet passenger. After a half-hour or so, Nolan called me and told me he’d be right out, that he just had to collect his belongings. “Meet me by the big fan,” he said. As I waited, I took a moment to observe the atmosphere and dictated into my phone what I saw:
…outside the convention center here…and what I see is…one common thing I see…trying to gauge the mood of people…it’s a mood of survivors. More smiles than not. But there’s definitely concern on people’s faces. You know people have unresolved business. There’s people that look a little angry but for the most part you see people that feel like they survived; they just got through it. And I see people helping people and people being helped. Old people. Young people. Lotta’ pregnant women. Lotta’ babies. A lot of people you can tell just averted disaster. It’s crazy, but they appreciate what they got. They’re happy out here–most of them. All the flags are at half-mast…
For the most part it was very tame, controlled, and safe environment. There were a fair amount of police and an even greater number of volunteers. There were lines for the evacuees to be frisked and searched before they entered the building. Volunteers were giving out free water and cigarettes. There were port-a-potties and tables with jugs of hand-sanitizer. It seemed like a place that had corrected most of the atrocious and deathly inadequacies of the lesser-prepared, makeshift shelters which had preceded it. One guy was walking around with a broken arm with a metal “brace” sticking out of his skin. He was in obvious pain. There was an old couple sitting next to each other calmly talking as their grandchildren played around them. There was a young mother—and her mother—trying to stop her three month old baby from crying. I can’t imagine what the past week had been like for that young mother. I wonder what random factors (their location when disaster struck…the actual time they were rescued…luck…) allowed this child escape the fate shared by other children that perished from dehydration, malnutrition, and worse.
I will tell you one thing that wasn’t “random.” Over 90% of the people at the center were black.
I waited by the big fan for about 20 minutes. Holding on to my sign, I impatiently decided to walk around some more and realized that there were about a half-dozen big fans. So I walked back and forth until, finally, my phone rang. It was Nolan. “Hey man, it’s me…hey! I see you right in front of me on your phone!” I hung up my phone and he handed his to the volunteer from whom he had borrowed it. We walked up to each other and gave that awkward handshake/half-hug that guys do. We both were relieved to finally find each other. I sheepishly asked, “how you doin’ buddy?” He just shook his head and asked me to wait with his bag so he could go back inside and grab the rest of his stuff. A little while later he came out with a big pushcart loaded with giant clear plastic garbage bags stuffed with clothes. I awkwardly introduced myself to his sister, Veronica. The three of us walked to the van and unloaded the bags which I stuffed in the vehicle while they returned to the Convention Center to get their sister, the children, and the rest of their belongings.
There was something upsetting about packing their underwear, boxes of baby formula, tampons—bare necessities they’d been clinging to and hording for the past week. As I tried to wrap my head around the desperate situation these people had been in, a couple arguments broke out around me. One was between a father and a son. The young Eminem look-alike smashed his CD player and headphones to the ground as he and his dad exchanged F-bombs. Another was between a husband and wife. It was clear that some people were handling the stress of what happened differently than others.
Nolan and Veronica came back a little bit later with Paulette and her two children. It turns out that Marquis was already a year old, and a chubby little guy that easily topped 20 lbs. Fudgedly and fingers crossed, I re-installed his seat face-forward. Nolan warned me that Charleisha wouldn’t sit in hers. I told him, “listen man, the kids made it this far. I can’t let them in this car without being strapped in.” He acquiesced and for at least the time being I was victorious in the saga of the baby seats.
Meeting Paulette was strangely paradoxical. On the one hand, she looked at me—a stranger—with an obvious and understandable suspicion and distrust. But when it came time to put the kids in the van, she just handed her children over to me and let me buckle them in. Marquis smiled at me as I secured him in the seat. Charleisha was singing. Too young to understand, they were oblivious to everything that had been going on. I credit their mother, aunt, and uncle who had obviously done a good job of buffering them from all that had transpired until now. It was the first comforting moment since I had arrived in Houston.
Nolan sat in the front passenger seat next to me. Veronica and Paulette were sandwiched in the back seat with Charleisha. Marquis was the man of the hour and got his own row just behind us along with bags and bags of clothing. With the van packed to the hilt, we left the Convention Center and headed…in the wrong direction. Yeah, I took the incorrect road out of Houston.
Once I corrected my mistake we headed north. Our destination was Nolan’s aunt’s house in the north-central Louisiana town called Windsboro. Windsboro is just south of Wisner, which is just south of nothing. As we got out of Houston, I asked Nolan about how bad things were. He just shook his head, “I keep thinking it’s just a nightmare that I’m going to wake up from.” I learned at that point that the nightmare had just started for him: Nolan hadn’t spoken to his children since just before the hurricane hit New Orleans. Nolan, Jr., age 11, and Octavia, age 10, were with the mother’s sister when disaster struck. Whether it was faith or hope that assured him, he “knew” his kids were okay. I told him we had a long drive ahead of us and that he should probably catch up on some much needed sleep. He said, “I can’t sleep, man. I’m afraid I’m going to wake up and something else bad will have happened.” It’s kind of hard telling some guy you don’t even know that things are going to be okay when everything points to the contrary; so I bit my tongue and just drove.
The girls were quiet in the back while Marquis was crying pretty loudly. Nolan wondered if some music would help quiet the kid. I asked Nolan what kind of music the little guy liked. After a pause of non-response, I looked back at Marquis, shrugged my shoulders and volunteered a suggestion: “Hip-hop?” Nolan looked at me and after a moment of uncomfortable silence he thought about it, “yeah…I guess try that.” I dialed in one of Houston’s rap stations, turned it up and Marquis stopped crying instantaneously. Everybody in the van busted out laughing. After a bit, Nolan tilted his seat back and shut his eyes. After just staring out the window for a while, the girls also fell asleep. I turned the radio down and within an hour, I was the only one awake in the van. I focused on the traffic and realized this was the most careful I’d ever piloted a car in my life.
After it had gotten dark, Nolan woke up from his nap. As we made small talk I put the radio on. When commercials would come on, I’d change to another station. After a while Nolan noticed a pattern of me skipping any station that wasn’t playing rap. With a smile on his face, he finally spoke up to the white deejay, “I like rock’n’roll too, you know.” Being called out was much more funny than it was embarrassing. We continued driving north through Texas and eventually Veronica and Paulette woke up. Every once in a while the highway turned into a regular road that passed through small towns. Eventually Veronica spoke up, asking if I would stop at some sort of place that sells chicken. I thought to myself: “Uh, I’ll try, but that’s pretty specific. I wonder if Chicken McNuggets count?”
“Chicken…No problem,” I told her. About three minutes later, a Church’s Chicken appeared out of nowhere. There was no way Veronica saw it when she brought up dinner. I looked back at her, “did you smell it or something? That’s impressive.” We all cracked up over her premonition (or olfactory acuity) and I stopped the car in the parking lot. As the sisters got Charleisha out of her seat, I took Marquis out of his. We all started towards the restaurant and Paulette didn’t even give a second thought to this weird stranger and her baby. Holding that kid was one of the proudest moment of my life.
Nolan went to the restroom as the rest of us walked around the convenience store part attached to Church’s. A minute or so later the girls went into their bathroom. My bladder is probably smaller than the baby’s, so as we stood in front of the men’s room I was pretty much at a loss. Nolan walked out. “Sorry man,” I said as I handed him his full-diapered nephew. “My job description ends here.”
The girls and the children sat together in one booth. Nolan and I sat together in another. It was during the next hour that Nolan Doyle and I became friends. We talked about things as vague as “the great vibe” we got the moment we met each other. We talked about tangible things like our jobs (until the hurricane hit, Nolan was a carpenter). While we scarfed down chicken wings and biscuits, Nolan asked how much they were paying me to do this. I told him there was no “they” and explained how everything came about. He told me how much he appreciated what I was doing and what a “lifesaver” I was. I told him I was equally lucky as I had no idea, walking into this situation, what kind of people were about to enter my life. “I could have picked up a couple guys, that halfway to Louisiana, would have pulled out a gun and taken my van,” I told him. “No joke,” he said and told me about a lot of the thugs he encountered escaping New Orleans and lived amongst in the Convention Center. He was so happy to finally not need to be “on guard” against the life and death situation he’d been living in for the past week. It’s hard to accurately recount our exchange in that random booth in a random fast food restaurant in the middle of nowhere, but a brotherhood was formed and I’ll never forget it.
Things were going really well as we left Church’s. And then disaster struck. As we were about to get back in the van, I put Marquis into his seat. I was a pro at this point. Strap over the left arm here, strap over the right arm there, put the belt in the buckle and snap. Piece of cake!
Piece of skin.
I realized as soon as I did it: I had pinched a piece of chubby Marquis’ chubby thigh in the buckle. I kept my voice calm and soothing, like a doctor attempting to distract a patient from pain: “Okay buddy. Let me just fix this here for a second…” But in my head: “Oh hell. Red release button, dude! Keep smiling at the kid. Red button! Red button…” For a few moments, he just looked at me unbothered, with a pleasant expression. I quickly and carefully pressed the enormous red button to release the belts—and his thigh. What Marquis lacked in response time, he made up for in response.
I’m sure it is awful for a parent to accidentally hurt your child. Let me tell you something. It’s a lot worse when it’s not yours. Almost on cue, Charleisha alternated between mimicking her screaming brother and chanting the word, “bitch” over and over again. This prompted Nolan to tell his niece to stop cussing. Paulette told her brother to worry about something else. So on and so forth. The next 15 minutes helped me appreciate my father’s and mother’s patience when I’d discipline my little sister for invading “my” side of the back seat and the frequent melees that broke out during our family vacations. Completely flustered, I focused on the task at hand. Start the car, get out of the lot, and drive. Which I did…the wrong way. Yes, I know I have a problem. Eventually the tears stopped—no, not mine, but be assured I was close.
Sometime after we took the 20 East into Louisiana, Friday became Saturday and Nolan and I talked about all different things. We are both big on comic books and I came to learn that he creates his own heroes. One of his hobbies is drawing characters and writing their stories. His current creation is a ninja named Ronin who has traveled from the past to fight crime in the ghetto.
Another thing he and I share is a knack for rhyming. Before I knew it we were freestyle rapping back and forth. He was great and I held my own. We’d bounce around the radio stations and just start singing and rapping over whatever we could find: hip-hop, gospel, rock (we even harmonized over Phil Collins). We aren’t starting a band anytime soon, but if we did it wouldn’t be half bad. It wouldn’t be half-good either but we had quite a few laughs.
Sharing a cheap cigar, Nolan spoke about how as miserable as things were for him, he knew they happened for a reason. Even amidst death and destruction and the unresolved loss of his children, his hope was intact. Though he always thought he’d one day move from New Orleans—his home for 31 years—he never thought it would be under these circumstances. I asked if he knew where he wanted to end up. He said Houston seemed pretty cool. We kept talking throughout the night and it felt like we’d know each other for years.
About a half hour from our destination, my phone died. We stopped at a gas station. The weekend/post-midnight crowd was in full attendance at the convenience store parking lot. I immediately got a bad vibe from the young thugs and punks. Nolan and I went inside to charge the phone for a couple minutes and use the restroom. I went outside to check on the girls and let them know that we’d be there for a few minutes. They told me that they were a little freaked out by some guy just sitting on the hood of his car, staring at the van, “like he wanted to take it.” I finished filling up the tank and told them that I’d lock them in the van, go get Nolan and we’d leave. As I locked the doors, the guy that was eyeballing them started to have words with another guy. The one that had been looking at the girls made a move like he was getting a gun in his car. The other guy called his bluff (either he didn’t have one or wasn’t prepared to use it), they shoved each other a couple times, and drove off to “settle things” elsewhere. Meanwhile I had already pulled the van up to the entrance to grab Nolan and get out of there.
We drove south towards the last few towns before Wisner: Mangham. Baskin. Winnsboro. Gilbert. Nolan’s aunt and uncle (Darnell and Mary) thought it would be too difficult for us to follow directions to their place so they told us to meet them at the blinking streetlight between the church and the bridge. It was there where we would meet Darnell in a white Chevrolet. He didn’t have a cell phone so our only contact was Mary’s home phone and the connection was spotty at best. When we finally got there, there was no sign of him. After we grew tired of waiting, Nolan called Mary. She said we should have seen him already and that he was probably driving around looking for us. We started driving back and forth but we had no luck. Finally a white car drove past us. “That’s him!” Nolan yelled. I started honking and stopped the car but the guy kept going. “You sure it was him?” I asked. Nolan thought so but hadn’t seen his uncle since he was a child, “but it was a white Chevy and it looked like him.” I turned around and chased down the guy. Everyone was so excited as we pulled alongside him, honking the horn. Both cars were going over 40 mph and Nolan stuck his head out the window, “Uncle Darnell! It’s me, Nolan.” The guy looked at us like we were crazy and just sped off. The four of us looked like castaways stranded on an island, all energy spent from trying to flag down an airplane that just flew on by—our last bit of hope gone.
After a few phone calls and more driving we found out we hadn’t even gotten to the town of Gilbert and that the road had more than one blinking light between a bridge and church. We finally met up with the real Uncle Darnell and followed him to his house. We drove down a dark, gravel road and turned onto a darker, dirt road. Our trip was complete.
Nolan took a deep breath and acknowledged what an adjustment it was going to be for a city boy to start over in the “sticks” he’d only visited when younger. Darnell and Aunt Mary gave us a warm welcome and we unloaded the van. The girls sat on the couch, completely exhausted. I gave them and the children a kiss on the head. Veronica thanked me and I went outside to say goodbye to Nolan. We hugged and thanked each other and, holding back some emotion, promised that we’d stay in touch.
It was 3:30 a.m. and I set back on the road from where I came with hopes of making it to Tulsa in time for my flight. I did some calculations and I realized there was no way that was going to happen so I just tried to get as far west on the 20 as I could. At about 6:30 I came upon Shreveport, a city that work had brought me to only a few months before. I drove to a couple hotels before finding a vacancy, changed my flight to leave from Dallas, and went to sleep for a few hours. I finished the last leg of my 1100 mile journey, left Dallas and flew home to Los Angeles. I hadn’t even made it to airport parking lot where my car was when the phone rang. It was Nolan calling to make sure I got home safely. We spoke for a few minutes as I took the bus to my car. I asked him if he’d heard from his children. He said no. With no internet and limited phone access, he wondered if there was anything I could do to help. I collected his kids’ information, hung up the phone, and broke down.
For the next few weeks I called hundreds of shelters, hospitals, and churches in Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi. Every conversation pretty much went the same. I’d describe 11 yr. old Nolan, Jr. and 10 yr. old Octavia as well as I could. I’d tell each voice on the other line of the children’s birthdates, birthmarks, and their location the last time they were heard from before all hell broke loose. They were with their auntie the last time Nolan had spoken to them, just before the levees gave out. Upon searching the web, I found out that the auntie’s mother was also looking for her daughter and the children. For the next few days we would call each other to see if we’d heard anything. Each conversation ended with her sharing her fear and hopelessness; she hadn’t spoken to her mother or brother either and worried they were all dead. Eventually she moved from the shelter she was in and we never spoke again.
For a week or so, I tried to search for her other family members but it was too inefficient and detracted from my attempts to find Nolan’s kids.
Each week Nolan and I would speak and he’d thank me for my efforts. Resources soon allowed him to join the search but after more than a month, the only good news I had was that his kids’ names were not on the list of the 1000 known dead. It felt weird when I excitedly called him to say there was still hope, realizing that countless phone calls must have been made in those preceding weeks to confirm other parents’ and children’s worst fears.
As time went on, I wore out and my calls dissipated. It’s amazing to think that I could find “more important” things to do than finding those kids, but eventually I did. I think I succumbed to the same phenomenon that has led most of us to let this and any disaster recede to the back of our minds. Is it a developed callousness? A loss of fortitude? Apathy? I prefer to think one’s ability to distance oneself from these types of things is a self defense mechanism that protects. Regardless, I fought less and less…
Almost a month after the search began, good news came from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children: both Octavia and Nolan, Jr. were safe and sound in Maryland with their aunt.
Nolan and I still keep in touch and spoke at length just a few weeks ago. He has put back together the broken pieces of his life and after getting back on his feet in Houston, he now lives and works back in his hometown of New Orleans.
I began writing this in October of 2005 and chipped away at it periodically over the past year. As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, I struggled with how to end my story. Though I don’t want to preach or moralize, I think I would be remiss in not speaking from my heart about what the events 14 months ago have illuminated about this country.
The United States suffers from a massive and widening discrepancy between the poor and wealthy (12.7% of Americans live in poverty, according to US Census Bureau) and there is a direct relationship between the color of one’s skin and which category they fall in (over 24% of blacks live in poverty; 1 out of 4). Many knew this before the hurricane’s fallout, and many more learned it as the images and statistics of New Orleans were shared with the rest of the country. I hope that, for the majority, it was a reminder that the country has not adequately resolved the inequalities that slavery branded only 150 years ago.
Since their ignominiously forced birth into this country most blacks have progressed admirably despite the obstacles they have faced since then. Their progress is a result of their own determination, hard work, and faith. And let there be now doubt that this is a beautiful and benevolent nation that inspires determination, rewards hard work, and encourages faith. But despite the best efforts of people both black and white, there are many that are being left behind.
I believe strongly that the chasm between the haves and have-nots and its relation to race is not coincidental. It is racist. Katrina highlighted this. This racism doesn’t manifest itself in lynchings or even a prohibited right to vote, but it exists and it is no less ugly. The authors of A Polite Apartheid put it best:
“The racism we must recognize and confront today has a far subtler hue. It’s a racism that excludes instead of oppresses. It’s a racism that is gentle on the surface but unrelenting and horribly damaging at its core. It’s a racism that is creating a self-contented over-class in America.”
So what do we do about it? I wish I had the answer. I suppose the first step is to be aware that there is a problem. Then you have to decide if it bothers you. The daunting—and frightening—challenge is to then find time to turn being affected into taking action. Just over 14 months have passed since I saw a grown man on CNN crying into camera, begging for help to find his family as the flood waters rose. I will never forget him trying unsuccessfully to contain himself long enough to remember and give his phone number. I was angry and upset and I did something about it.
In the year since, I have done nothing.
Has the problem gone away? Of course not. But sadly, my motivation to act has. What incensed me earlier has become virtually incapable of dragging my ass from the proverbial couch to simply finish and send this email. Thus, it is hypocritical for me to urge substantial action from anyone else. That being said, I believe that small gestures and small actions do add up. Whether in the form of a prayer, a ballot, a different consciousness when encountering the news, or an altered way of interacting with strangers…all action means something.
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