By the time you read this issue of the Du Bois Review, it
will be nearly a year after the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina swept
the Gulf Coast and roiled the nation. While this issue does not
concentrate on the disaster, (the next issue of the DBR will be
devoted solely to research on the social, economic, and political
ramifications of the Katrina disaster), the editors would be amiss if we
did not comment on an event that once again exposed the deadly fault lines
of the American racial order. The loss of the lives of nearly 1500
citizens, the many more tens of thousands whose lives were wrecked, and
the destruction of a major American city as we know it, all had clear
racial overtones as the story unfolded. Indeed, the racial story of the
disaster does not end with the tragic loss of life, the disruption of
hundred of thousands of lives, nor the physical, social, economic, and
political collapse of an American urban jewel. The political map of the
city of New Orleans, the state of Louisiana (and probably Texas), and the
region is being rewritten as the large Black and overwhelmingly Democratic
population of New Orleans was dispersed out of Louisiana, with states such
as Texas becoming the perhaps permanent recipients of a large share of the
evacuees.
The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast
