Our Town: Race and Katrina Our Town: Race and Katrina (October 26, 2005)

by Don Kazak

When shocked Americans watched the Hurricane Katrina disaster unfold in New Orleans, something became evident almost immediately: Most of those trapped in the flooded city were African American.

It took only a couple of days before people began to ask why the trapped survivors, and presumably most the dead, were African American.

And then came the flip-side question: Would the country have allowed this to happen to white Americans?

Luis Fraga put the issue into local perspective.

Looking out over a packed Stanford lecture hall Oct. 10, the political science professor asked, "To what extent does Palo Alto share its wealth and resources ... with East Palo Alto or east San Jose?"

If a Katrina-like disaster struck the Bay Area, would the pattern of a victimized racial minority be repeated?

Fraga was co-teaching the first of four classes at Stanford -- open and free to the public -- on "Confronting Katrina: Race, Class and Disaster in American Society."

The second class was held Monday night, with the third and fourth to be held Nov. 7 and 28 (both 7-9 p.m., Room 105, Braun Hall).

This is the first time Stanford has put together a series of classes open to both its students and the public on the heels of a national disaster -- designed to explore what happened and why.

Judging from faculty, student and public response, the effort is an enormous success.

After Stanford was back in session last month, faculty members at the university's Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity were kicking around ideas of doing something in response to the Katrina disaster.

"Why don't we do a course?" Lawrence Bobo remembers someone asking. So they did.

Bobo, a professor of sociology and the director of the center, and other faculty members started putting together a plan.

Rounding up faculty on short notice to teach the classes wasn't hard. "The faculty kicked down our doors to be involved," Bobo said.

All thought there would be pretty high interest. They were right.

The 250-seat lecture hall was jammed. "Every seat was full and people were standing in every conceivable place," Bobo said. He estimated the crowd at 350 people, about half Stanford students and about half from Palo Alto and nearby communities.

Those attending heard that New Orleans is two-thirds African American, with 27 percent of residents living below the poverty level -- many families living on less than $15,000 a year.

Many of those trapped had no cars in which to flee and no money to take a bus or train to safety.

"Nothing reveals more how these people were viewed and treated as marginal Americans than the evacuation plans at the local, state and federal levels," History Professor Al Camarillo told the class.

"The failure of the institutional response was not merely because of bureaucratic inadequacies or failures of leadership at every level -- though they were obvious -- but because institutions and the people that run them do not take into consideration Americans on the margin."

Fraga said it's not just politicians who should be blamed, "because at one level, if there is a crisis in political leadership, we have only ourselves and a community of voters to blame."

Looking forward, "This Katrina disaster should give us all pause in the Bay Area," Camarillo said. "Seismologists are saying there is going to be a massive earthquake that is going to devastate portions of the Bay Area." He said there are estimates that more than 100,000 will be killed in a large quake, with a quarter of a million left homeless -- "and you are supposed to fend for yourself for three of four days."

A community like Palo Alto, with more resources and more first-responders, would likely be better off than East Palo Alto. And if the freeway overpasses came down, East Palo Alto would be isolated.

Most post-Katrina attention has focused on blaming FEMA, New Orleans and Louisiana for inadequate responses and woefully poor communication with each other.

Yet the victims were the victims, no matter who screwed up.

And the same thing could happen in the Bay Area.

Senior Staff Writer Don Kazak can be e-mailed at dkazak@paweekly.com.

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