A Hurricane of Differences

By Glen Ford and Peter Gamble, The Black Commentator. Posted January 10, 2006.

Hurricane Katrina may mark a watershed in black perceptions of the African American presence and prospects in the United States. "It could very well shape this generation of young people in the same way that the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King shaped our generation," said Prof. Michael Dawson, of the University of Chicago whose team conducted a survey of black and white reactions to the disaster between October 28 and November 17, 2005. "It suggested to blacks the utter lack of the liberal possibility in the United States," said Dawson, the nation's premier black social demographer.

Huge majorities of blacks agreed that the federal government's response would have been faster if the victims of Katrina in New Orleans had been white (84 percent), and that the Katrina experience shows there is a lesson to be learned about continued racial inequality (90 percent).

But only 20 percent of whites believe that the federal government's failure to respond had anything to do with race, and only 38 percent think there is something to be learned about racial inequality from the Katrina disaster.

The differences of perceptions based on an event to which the entire nation was exposed in living color, are staggeringly instructive. Blacks and whites saw the same images, but perceived them differently. The Dawson poll, which included approximately 500 whites and 700 blacks, shows a 64 percent difference between black and white perceptions on the federal response to Katrina, and a 52 percent divide on the disaster's significance in terms of racial equality in the United States.

A Grand Canyon looms between the way African Americans and white people view the world, despite the fact that both groups are privy to the same information and images.

However, there is a degree of murkiness in these figures, just as exists in the minds of human beings. Dawson's group surveyed black and white reactions to the statements of Kanye West, the rapper, immediately after the Katrina fiasco. West said:

"I hate the way they portray us in the media. You see a black family, it says, 'They're looting.' You see a white family, it says, 'They're looking for food.' And, you know, it's been five days [waiting for federal help] because most of the people are black. And even for me to complain about it, I would be a hypocrite because I've tried to turn away from the TV because it's too hard to watch. I've even been shopping before even giving a donation, so now I'm calling my business manager right now to see what is the biggest amount I can give, and just to imagine if I was down there, and those are my people down there. So anybody out there that wants to do anything that we can help -- with the way America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off, as slow as possible. I mean, the Red Cross is doing everything they can. We already realize a lot of people that could help are at war right now, fighting another way -- and they've given them permission to go down and shoot us! George Bush doesn't care about black people!"

Glen Ford and Peter Gamble are the publishers of The Black Commentator. They are writing a book to be entitled, Barack Obama and the Crisis in Black Leadership.

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