Former MP Oona King revisited New Orleans recently. (She's the Labour MP who lost her seat to George Galloway, the same George Galloway who's in favor of terrorism and against abortion rights. Yes, that George Galloway.)
"Like Haiti with skyscrapers" is how New Orleans was described to her, yet she still found the experience startling. In a piece she wrote for today's Guardian, she examines the racial divide that still exists in America, exposed by Hurricane Katrina:
New Orleans is now dead; like Pompeii, Dresden and Hiroshima, suddenly annihilated with no time for farewells. Like most of those cities, it will return again, but so too will the schism of race that haunts America. Race governs the lives of most black people, but remains barely visible to most whites. Time and again, I have met white people who are genuinely confused as to why blacks are obsessed with race. Like a Punch and Judy show, they get bopped over the head by angry black people shouting, "It's behind you!"
Oona King's family is from America, her father exiled for 40 years after asking a draft board to address him as "Mr." (He was pardoned by President Clinton after a 96-year old judge admitted being racially motivated when he sentenced him to prison.) She remembers being denied shelter at a youth hostel during a trip to New Orleans as a teenager, an experience repeated for many victims of Hurricane FEMA, who were "kicked off the bus" once again for being black.
Read her story; you'll be glad you did.
