September-October 2005

Race, Hurricane Katrina, organizing to rebuild

CHICAGO – It didn’t take personal dislike from President Bush to ensure Black deaths and suffering from Hurricane Katrina. Structural racism – biased policies and practices between and across powerful institutions – ensured those failures, said panelists during a recent conference devoted to race, public policy and organizing.

“I am from New Orleans and I will be from New Orleans until the day I die, and then I will be in New Orleans. Structural racism was there way before Katrina,” said Barbara Majors.

The veteran grassroots organizer is co-chair of Bring New Orleans Back, an advisory commission charged with developing a master plan to rebuild the city. Majors spoke during an Oct. 21 discussion at “Advancing Racial Justice,” a conference sponsored by the Applied Research Center and the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois Chicago.

African Americans lived in the devastated Ninth Ward because of segregation, Majors said. Blacks could not buy homes or live anywhere else and that put them in harm’s way, she said. The school and the health systems that must be rebuilt were disasters before Katrina, Majors noted. Something different and better must rise from the debris and destruction, she said.

“If we’re not part of rebuilding New Orleans for us, than I don’t give a damn if it’s ever rebuilt,” Majors declared. She wants a moratorium on spending until preferences for evacuees are in requirements for hiring and contracting.

Majors argued structural racism needs to be understood and fought because it is pervasive. New Orleans evacuees are getting help in Houston as other poor people struggle to survive, she said. New polices are needed that don’t pit poor people against one another, Majors argued.

U.S. institutions often drive one another, explained John Powell, executive director of the Kirwin Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University. He offered two examples: An attempt to change the curriculum in Miami high schools leads to a larger struggle, because administrators say college admission requirements determine what is taught. A successful fight to increase mortgage loans for Blacks brings an unforeseen fight for fair mortgage insurance.

Terry Keleher, director of the Chicago-based Applied Research Center Midwest Office, talked about verbally sparring with white journalists who couldn’t accept research showing racism caused disproportionate suspensions of African American students. An ARC report found Blacks, less than 16 percent of public school students, accounted for 32 percent of suspensions. The debate was really about the concept of racism, not suspensions, he said.

Community organizers and groups should consider how race impacts their work and how institutions may stymie progress, said presenters. Equating racism with personal prejudice supports the myth that poverty and disparity are solely caused by personal failures, they added.

There is a big difference between individual prejudice and systematic racism, Keleher said. Organizations need to expose, prove and frame racism while offering concrete alternatives, Keleher said. “We’re not going to eliminate racism, if we don’t illuminate racism,” he added. Several NPA groups attended the conference, including NTIC, San Lucas Workers Center, Albany Park Neighborhood Council, Land Stewardship Project, Blocks Together and the Student Tenant Organizing Project.

– Richard Muhammad