Jonathan Curiel, Disaster aid raises race issue Critics say poor blacks not considered in planning for emergencies, evacuations, 9/3/05 San Francisco Chronicle (CA) A10 (September 3, 2005) 

EXCERPT  . . ."Like Bullard, Vernellia R. Randall, an African American law professor at the University of Dayton, uses the term "environment racism" to describe the conditions that prompted New Orleans' poorest blacks to reside in areas with unstable levees and other infrastructure problems. "Black people live in the worst, most vulnerable parts of a physical location, because that's the land that people allow them to live on," Randall says. "The Environmental Protection Agency has done studies in the past that have shown that the No. 1 factor related to whether or not a dump would be located in or near a community is the race of the community -- black being that race. Poor whites had dumps put in their communities less often than poor blacks.""

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Like Parks, Randall says Hurricane Katrina has forced the debate into the open, where she hopes it will stay. "I'm glad to see people looking at the race issue," Randall says, "because it really is so obvious

  ARTICLE Jonathan Curiel, Disaster aid raises race issue Critics say poor blacks not considered in planning for emergencies, evacuations, 9/3/05 San Francisco Chronicle (CA) A10 (September 3, 2005) The steady stream of images coming out of New Orleans -- the scenes of black corpses floating in the water, of poor blacks still struggling to find shelter, of looters leaving storefronts with food and goods -- has helped feed a national debate about what role race is playing in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Many black leaders, including members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, have condemned the pace and scope of the government's rescue effort. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., told a news conference Friday, "To the president of the United States, I simply say: God cannot be pleased with our response." Two African American professors contend that racism was a factor in the government's slow response and in the conditions that put so many blacks in harm's way. Black leaders complain the media have focused disproportionately on African American looters in New Orleans, but a conservative African American pundit says the looters themselves are guilty not just of stealing but of shaming all blacks by their criminal behavior. The issue of race and racism, blacks say, has always swirled around New Orleans, a racially divided city that is almost 70 percent African American. The deadly waters that followed Hurricane Katrina have brought the issue to the surface for a worldwide audience watching the tragedy unfold on television, they say. New Orleans' most vulnerable neighborhoods -- the ones most susceptible to flooding and infrastructure problems -- have long been populated by poor African Americans. Authorities planning for Hurricane Katrina did not consider the poverty of these neighborhoods when they ordered the evacuation of New Orleans, and this mind-set, whether it was conscious or not, doomed many of New Orleans' black residents, says Robert D. Bullard, a professor of sociology at Clark Atlanta University and the author of such books as "Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality," and "Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color." "The disaster isn't Katrina -- the disaster is the response," said Bullard in a phone interview. Authorities, he said, didn't "plan for people who don't have resources, who are poor, who don't have credit cards, who don't have driver's licenses, who don't have cars and the means to evacuate. It's hard not to see race when you see who's been plucked from the rooftops and who's been quartered in the squalid, health-threatening conditions of the (New Orleans) Superdome. Race, class and vulnerability operate to really create an unfair situation in terms of the response. This is not to say that people who are doing the response are racist and are doing something to hurt black people. " Like Bullard, Vernellia R. Randall, an African American law professor at the University of Dayton, uses the term "environment racism" to describe the conditions that prompted New Orleans' poorest blacks to reside in areas with unstable levees and other infrastructure problems. "Black people live in the worst, most vulnerable parts of a physical location, because that's the land that people allow them to live on," Randall says. "The Environmental Protection Agency has done studies in the past that have shown that the No. 1 factor related to whether or not a dump would be located in or near a community is the race of the community -- black being that race. Poor whites had dumps put in their communities less often than poor blacks." Frank Pinkard, the pastor at Evergreen Missionary Baptist Church in Oakland, has contacted TV news shows and other media to complain they're over- emphasizing images showing black looters in New Orleans. "They're promoting racism and bitterness because the only people being portrayed as looters are black folk," he says. "Human nature tells me that more than just black folk are looters, but you haven't seen anyone else other than black folks. The way they're portraying this, they're driving a wedge between any kind of goodwill that exists between African American and non- African Americans." But Bob Parks, a Massachusetts cable TV producer and former Republican congressional candidate who writes a regular blog called "Black & Right," says the looters themselves are to blame. He also takes issue with New Orleans residents using guns and other weapons. "The majority of refugees in the Superdome are black, and there were helicopters bringing in supplies to these black people," he said in a phone interview. "They weren't looking to see what color they were bringing this food and water to. They were bringing to people. And then, somebody started shooting at the helicopters, which stopped going in there. What element of racism are we going to blame that on? "At some point," he says, "black people have got to stop breaking the law. You have people all over the world who are more than willing to donate money to help black people suffering in New Orleans. But when you have these video depictions of black people taking all this stuff, you're going to have people with second thoughts. The people who are shooting at the National Guard are making it bad for everybody. You can't keep excusing that." Parks' Web essay on the subject generated heated e-mails from black readers, some of whom accused him of insensitivity, others of whom told him they shared his views. Parks says the debate is crucial if blacks are to come to terms with issues of race. Like Parks, Randall says Hurricane Katrina has forced the debate into the open, where she hopes it will stay. "I'm glad to see people looking at the race issue," Randall says, "because it really is so obvious."