Americans of all political stripes are prone to thinking of their country as the land of achievement equality, a place where people of color can earn PhD’s and buy summer homes as readily as whites, at least in theory. But the real measure of America lies not in the equality of achievement, but in the equality of disaster -- according people of all color the same degree of respect and humanity not when they’re at their best, but when they’re in crisis or at their most vulnerable. The catastrophic wildfires in Southern California this week have certainly provoked that concern and humanity, and then some; it has also proved beyond any doubt that disaster equality in America is still a long, long way off.
Watching the sympathetic coverage of the fires from my front-row seat in L.A., of course I think of Hurricane Katrina. The deluge in New Orleans and the gulf coast happened two years ago and quickly established itself as the mother of all modern disasters: Thousands dead or missing, half a city turned into a ghost town overnight, property damage almost too high to calculate. But though the event was covered diligently enough — TV news loves nothing better than a disaster unfolding in real time — the great majority of people victimized by the event were not. The masses of black poor and working-class trying to find shelter and aid were regarded by the media not with sympathy, but with puzzlement, indifference, and in some cases, hostility. In the midst of one of the worst crises in American history, blacks were immediately cast in familiar roles as criminals and slackers until they proved themselves otherwise. Little attention was paid to the fact that most of the displaced were New Orleans natives who were being suddenly and violently torn from the only home they had ever known. Katrina quickly shaped up not as a story of human tragedy, but a narrow one of public safety — how people were faring was less important than how Wal Mart was protecting its stock from looters.
Contrast this with the story of the wildfires that is still being told. Of course Southern California is a different landscape and demographic than New Orleans: The fire victims are notably white and affluent, the homes being destroyed sit on exclusive beachfront and mountain locales. California is the light-filled projection of an enduring American dream of the good life—the last, best place for "achievement equality" -- while Louisiana (and the entire old South) is the ancient repository of the American nightmare of race and inequality of all kinds. Still, the differences in disaster narratives are startling. Fire victims in Malibu, San Diego, Santa Clarita Valley and Orange County are clearly victims (a word we are loathe to apply to blacks in any place or circumstances). Through no fault of their own, they have lost houses that they have worked hard to acquire -- the more expensive the house, the more sympathy they deserve. People are shown over and over leaving these ill-fated homes clutching valuables or clinging to beloved pets; the emphasis is on personal loss and separation. In contrast, the black New Orleanians were portrayed as having almost nothing to lose besides the clothes on their backs. True, many were renters, not homeowners, but that’s a technicality; being New Orleans natives with families going back generations more than qualified them for the kind of sympathy we’re pouring on California like flame retardant.
Then there’s the issue of whether people should be living in these perilous locations in the first place. In New Orleans, the subtext of many post-Katrina discussions was that the below sea-level parts of the city was a major flood waiting to happen, and the chiefly black residents were somehow at fault for being in the way. That’s actually a viable idea in Southern California, where houses are routinely swept away by seasonal fire and mudslides on land clearly not meant for building houses or anything at all. But the land is desirable, the owners willing to pay for their custom piece of the American dream, so all culpability is forgiven. Or forgotten.
The last, but hardly least, difference of note between then and now is the government response. Unlike former Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco, California governor-cum-celebrity Arnold Schwarzenegger took charge from day one, assuring the state that any and all resources would be brought to bear on emergency management. Washington couldn’t respond quickly enough; Bush made a disaster declaration, and FEMA was on the scene in (relatively) record time. Of course this was an ideal moment for the feds to prove they weren’t really as clueless and uncaring as they appeared in ’05 -- a perfect political opportunity for Republicans to do some much-needed image rebuilding. I was encouraged to see the media express healthy skepticism -- one news anchor asked FEMA chief David Paulison if he really expected people to trust his agency to do the right thing this time.
We have learned a little from experience. But not enough. The depth and efficiency of California’s disaster cleanup only underscores the pain of Hurricane Katrina business that is tragically unfinished -- or that was never addressed at all.
---
Erin Aubry Kaplan is a contributing editor to Opinion at the Los Angeles Times.
