2008 Woodie Awards
Activist speaks against racial privilege and Hurricane Katrina
Jessica Pezzone
Issue date: 11/16/05 Section: Opinion
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Attended by many members of the University and the Newport community, Wise's hour-long talk addressed racial issues, white privilege throughout New Orleans and the influence of big business and the media on our society today. Wise, a powerful speaker who quite thoroughly researched his ideas, had an effect on all who heard him speak or read his literature.
Wise, who spoke on the issue of racial privilege in reference to Hurricane Katrina, noted the racial makeup of New Orleans: an urban society, dominated by black people, and immensely poorer than the majority of the country. New Orleans is extremely racially segregated, and Wise noted that the disparities between the minority communities and affluent white communities were "sickening."
According to the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, neighborhoods such as New Orleans' direly underprivileged Fischer Development are 99.2 percent black, while the extremely wealthy Lake Shore/Lake Vista community is a mere 6 percent African American. Wise claims that racial and economic problems began long before Hurricane Katrina, and that the big businesses crippling these poorer communities were sure to lead to eventual disaster.
The government had no plan to evacuate the underprivileged residents of New Orleans out of the community, but instead set up emergency shelters in the Convention Center and the Superdome. These refuges were not equipped with the necessary supplies to accommodate the large number of citizens with deaths being reported due to a lack of food, water, and medicine. Although there was television coverage of people begging for these life-saving items, necessary aid was not sent for days after the tragedy occurred.
One of Wise's points of outrage was the response of the government to the hurricane relief efforts even after the storm had hit. On his website (www.timwise.org), Wise said, "Congress took four days to come back from their vacation to arrange for an emergency aid bill… [Congress] couldn't manage to hustle it back to D.C. for four days to help save the dying in New Orleans…people who… are mostly poor and mostly black."