On the anniversary of Katrina, let's face what we already know: Segregation is a social cancer that existed before the hurricane. So is racism. So is extreme poverty. So, too, the abuse of the elderly and the very young. People were living in shantytowns long before Hurricane Katrina ripped through already ravaged neighborhoods in Mississippi and across the Gulf Coast.
The government had abandoned the poor long before Katrina's winds gathered speed. Mississippi was the poorest state in the union, tied only with Louisiana. Folks already had been dropped from Medicaid rolls and left to fend for themselves without safety nets or food for the next day. Many people were never gainfully employed or properly educated, clothed or housed. Thousands of black children sat in classrooms reminiscent of Jim Crow days, gazing out windows, looking at landscapes of desolation and hopelessness.
To live in the real world is to not be shocked when learning about how relief trucks passed by East Biloxi, a predominantly black community, to get to D'Iberville, a predominantly white middle-class community. To live in the real world is to understand why the Red Cross station in East Biloxi barely served food, had no mobile health care unit and was located in a depressing run-down building, while the Red Cross station in D'Iberville was pristine, well-stocked with food and supplies and a full-service mobile health care unit.
To live in the real world is to understand why houses, boats, trees and casinos were flying across highways and landing on peoples' 30-year mortgages, but you never saw East Biloxi on television. To live in the real world is to understand how land-snatching developers seized the opportunity to gentrify communities of color out of existence in New Orleans and Biloxi, and how citizens born and raised there had no voice in where they lived.
This is the America most people of color and the poor are used to. What is shocking is that many people refuse to believe this occurs in America. Believe it. Aug. 29, 2005, was not so different from almost every other day for the poor and downtrodden. Over the past year, there have been promises of support, equality, increased employment, education and shelter. But nothing really has changed. One year after Katrina, the same urgent issues confront us in the real world: racism, poverty, lack of opportunity and neglect. We must tackle them before disaster strikes again.
Jaribu Hill is executive director of the Mississippi Workers' Center for Human Rights in Greenville, Miss. She can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.