This is such an excellent piece on the racial politics of post-Katrina New 
Orleans from the Portside list that I can't resist passing it on...

Jon Cloke


Liberal Bad Faith in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina

Black Commentator, May 5, 2006

By Adolph Reed & Stephen Steinberg

So, Barbara Bush was right after all when she said, "So
many of the people in the arena here, you know, were
underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very
well for them." And Rep. Richard Baker, a 10-term
Republican from Baton Rouge, was right when he was
overheard telling lobbyists: "We finally cleaned up
public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but
God did." The publication of both statements elicited
public condemnation and was followed by a flurry of
hairsplitting denials. But it is now clear that their
only transgression was to say in unvarnished language
what many pundits, politicians, and policy wonks were
thinking. Since then, there has been a stream of
proposals in more circumspect language, first by
conservatives and then by a liberal policy circle at
Harvard, that also envision the resettlement of New
Orleans' poverty population far from the Vieux Carré,
Garden District and other coveted neighborhoods of the
"new" New Orleans.

David Brooks weighed in first, in a September 8 column
in the New York Times under the title, "Katrina's
Silver Lining." How can such a colossal natural
disaster that devastated an entire city and displaced
most of its population have "a silver lining"? Because,
according to Brooks, it provided an opportunity to
"break up zones of concentrated poverty," and thus "to
break the cycle of poverty."  The key, though, is to
relocate the poor elsewhere, and to replace them with
middle class families who will rebuild the city. "If we
just put up new buildings and allow the same people to
move back into their old neighborhoods," Brooks warned,
"then urban New Orleans will become just as rundown and
dysfunctional as before."

OK, this is what we expect from the neocons. Enter
William Julius Wilson, whose message in The Declining
Significance of Race catapulted him to national
prominence. In an appearance on The News Hour, Wilson
began by diplomatically complimenting Bush for
acknowledging the problems of racial inequality and
persistent poverty, and then made a pitch for funneling
both private and public sector jobs to low-income
people. So far so good. But then Wilson shifted to some
ominous language:

"Another thing, it would have been good if he had
talked about the need to ensure that the placement of
families in New Orleans does not reproduce the levels
of concentrated poverty that existed before. So I would
just like to underline what Bruce Katz was saying and
that is that we do have evidence that moving families
to lower poverty neighborhoods and school districts can
have significant positive effects."

Wilson was referring to his fellow panelist on The News
Hour, Bruce Katz, who was chief of staff for the
Department of Housing and Urban Development in the
Clinton administration. According to Katz, to build " a
competitive healthy and viable city," we need "to break
up the concentrations of poverty, to break up those
federal enclaves of poverty which existed in the city
and to really give these low income residents more
choice and opportunity." Finally, it becomes clear what
Katz is driving at:

"I think the city will be smaller and I'm not sure if
that's the worst thing in the world. I think we have an
opportunity here to have a win-win. I think we have an
opportunity to build a very different kind of city, a
city with a much greater mix of incomes. And, at the
same time, we have the opportunity, if we have the
right principles and we have the right tools to give
many of those low income families the ability to live
in neighborhoods, whether in the city, whether in the
suburbs, whether in other parts of the state or in
other parts of the country, live in neighborhoods where
they have access to good schools, safe streets and
quality jobs." (Italics ours.)

Stripped of its varnish, what Wilson and Katz are
proposing is a resettlement program that will result in
a "smaller" New Orleans that is depleted of its poverty
population.

This is not all. Together with Xavier Briggs, a
sociologist and urban planner at MIT, Wilson posted a
petition on the listserve of the Urban Sociology
Section of the American Sociological Association, under
the title "Moving to Opportunity in the Wake of
Hurricane Katrina." After some hand wringing about the
terrible impact of Katrina, we're presented with the
silver lining: "... our goal for these low-income
displaced persons, most of whom are racial minorities,
should be to create a 'move to opportunity.'" Of
course, this is followed by the necessary caveat: "we
do not seek to depopulate the city of its historically
black communities," et cetera, et cetera. But the main
thrust of the petition touts "a growing body of
research" that demonstrates the "significant positive
effects" of "mobility programs" that break up
"concentrated poverty." By happy coincidence, Briggs
has just published an edited volume, The Geography of
Opportunity, with a foreword by William Julius Wilson,
which promotes such mobility programs.

The dangerous, reactionary implications of a
government-sponsored resettlement program were
apparently not evident to the 200-plus signatories,
which include some of the most prominent names in
American social science: First on the list was William
Julius Wilson, followed by Christopher Jencks, Lawrence
Katz, David Ellwood, Herbert Gans, Todd Gitlin,
Alejandro Portes, Katherine Newman, Jennifer
Hochschild, Sheldon Danziger, Mary Jo Bane, to mention
some of the names on just the first of ten pages of
signatories. With these luminaries at the head of the
petition, given their unimpeachable liberal
credentials, scores of urban specialists flocked to add
their names. But how is the position laid out in the
measured language of the petition different from the
one expressed by Barbara Bush, Rep. Richard Baker, and
David Brooks? This is a relocation scheme, pure and
simple. Of course, the petition was careful to
stipulate that this was a voluntary program, leaving
people with a "choice" to return to New Orleans or to
relocate elsewhere. However, as these anointed policy
experts surely know, the ultimate outcome hinges on
what policies are enacted. If public housing and
affordable housing in New Orleans are not rebuilt, if
rent subsidies are withheld, then what "choice" do
people have but to relocate elsewhere? The certain
result will be "a smaller and stronger New Orleans,"
depleted of its poverty population.

Already public officials are crowing about the "new"
New Orleans. According to a recent article in the New
York Times, "the bullets and drugs and the fear are
gone now, swept away by Hurricane Katrina, along with
the dealers and gangs and most of the people." Step
forward another credentialed expert, Peter Scharf,
executive director of the Center for Society, Law and
Justice at the University of New Orleans. Hurricane
Katrina, Scharf exults, "was one of the greatest crime-
control tools ever deployed against a high-crime city,"
sweeping away, by his estimate, as many as 20,000
participants in the drug culture before the storm.

Here we see the first problem of the "moving to
opportunity" discourse. It is a throwback to the crude
environmental determinism of the Jacob Riis era, which
equated urban pathology with the urban environment, and
assumed that a more salubrious environment -- more
commodious housing, playgrounds, and clean streets --
would provide a panacea for the "ills of the city." One
Progressive Era book began with the instructive story
about a lamppost that had been the site of a rash of
suicides. Alas, the authorities removed the lamppost,
and poof, the suicides ceased! Does anyone doubt that
New Orleans' drug trade will not reestablish itself
elsewhere?

On closer examination, the campaign against
"concentrated poverty" is a scheme for making poverty
invisible. The policy is based on an anti-urban bias
that is as frivolous as it is deep-seated, as though
the romanticized small towns across the nation are not
plagued with the litany of "urban" problems. Wherever
there is chronic joblessness and poverty, and no matter
its color, there are high rates of crime, alcoholism,
drugs, school dropouts, domestic violence, and mental
health issues, especially among the poor youth who pass
up the option to rescue themselves by joining the army
and fighting America's imperial wars. To echo C. Wright
Mills, when poverty is spread thin, then these
behaviors can be dismissed as individual aberrations
stemming from moral blemishes, rather than a problem of
society demanding political action.

Besides, what kind of policy simply moves the poor into
somebody else's back yard, without addressing the root
causes of poverty itself, and in the process disrupts
the personal networks and community bonds of these
indigent people? Contrary to the claim of the petition,
the "careful studies" that have evaluated the "moving
to opportunity" programs report very mixed results, and
why should one think otherwise?  Unless the uprooted
families are provided with jobs and opportunities that
are the sine qua non of stable families and
communities, "move to opportunity" is only a spurious
theory and an empty slogan.

This brings attention to two other fatal flaws in the
logic of "moving to opportunity" policy. It is based on
a demonized image of the reprobate poor, who make
trouble for themselves and others. Yes, the drug
dealers are swept out of the 9th ward, but so are
countless others, often single mothers with children,
with an extended kin network of siblings, aunts,
uncles, cousins, and that heroic grandmother, who
indeed have deep roots in the communities from which
they are being evicted. How is it that this Gang of
200, from their ivory towers and gilded offices,
presume to speak for the poor? Tossing in a caveat to
the effect that "we do not seek to depopulate the city
or its historically black communities" must be read
literally. They want only to depopulate the city of
concentrated poverty, and they will leave intact
middle-class black communities that will insulate them
from charges of racism.

The great fallacy of the "moving to opportunity"
programs is that, by definition, they reach only a
small percentage of the poverty population (and
typically those who are both motivated and qualified to
participate in the program). Left behind are masses to
fend for themselves, particularly since the "moving to
opportunity" programs are themselves used as an excuse
to disinvest in these poor black communities that are
written off as beyond redemption. Moving to opportunity
becomes a perverse euphemism for policy abdication of
the poor people left behind who are in desperate need
of programs, services, and jobs.

Here, finally, is what is most sinister and myopic
about the "moving to opportunity" concept. It is not
part of a comprehensive policy to attack poverty and
racism: to rid the United States of impoverished
ghettos that pockmark the national landscape. Rather
the policy is enacted in places where poor blacks
occupy valuable real estate, as was the case for
Cabrini Green in Chicago. After Cabrini Green was
imploded, and its displaced residents sent off with
Section 8s, median sales prices of single-unit homes in
the vicinity soared from $138,000 to $700,000 during
the 1980s, and the area lost 7,000 African Americans
and gained 4,000 whites. It is only a matter of time
before we read upbeat news accounts about the
gentrifying neighborhoods surrounding the Vieux Carré.

What is perhaps saddest and most reprehensible about
the petition of the Gang of 200 is the solipsistic
arrogance on which it rests. This initiative comes at a
time when ACORN and other advocacy groups and
grassroots activists in New Orleans have championed
"the right of return" for even its poorest citizens
displaced by Katrina. According to the National Low
Income Housing Coalition, over 140,000 units of housing
were destroyed, the majority of them affordable for
low-income families. But the Housing Authority of New
Orleans has shut down its public-housing operations,
and informed landlords of people assisted by federal
rent vouchers that government rent subsidies for
impacted units have been suspended indefinitely.
According to Mike Howells, an organizer with a local
human rights group, "sensing an opportunity to enhance
the fortunes of real estate interests and to dump a
form of public assistance that mainly benefits poor
working class locals, Washington and local authorities
are using Hurricane Katrina as a pretext for
effectively gutting government subsidized housing in
New Orleans."

Sure enough, the key player on Mayor Nagin's "Bring New
Orleans Back Commission" is Joe Canizaro, a billionaire
local developer and one of President Bush's "pioneers,"
i.e., individuals who raised at least $100,000 for the
Bush presidential campaign. The commission initially
retained the Urban Land Institute -- a real estate
development industry organization on whose board
Canizaro sits -- to propose a framework for pursuing
reconstruction. Unsurprisingly, that proposal called
for a form of market-based triage. It recommended that
reconstruction efforts should be focused in proportion
to areas' market value and further suggested that
rebuilding of New Orleans East and the Lower Ninth Ward
be deferred indefinitely. What else could we have
expected? Asking such an outfit how to rebuild a
devastated city is like asking a fox how to organize a
chicken coop.

As we write, the fate of displaced poor New Orleanians
is more precarious than ever. FEMA has terminated rent
payments for thousands. Only 20 of the 117 public
schools that existed before the hurricane are
operating, and 17 of those 20 have opened as charter
schools. The school board laid off all the teachers and
staff months ago -- so much for concerns about poverty.
Most of the city remains empty, eerily quiet and
covered with a gray, filmy residue that shows how high
floodwaters were in each neighborhood. And the eerie
quiet underscores the colossal failure of government at
all levels to propose a plan for the hundreds of
thousands of people who have been dislocated for six
months and counting.

Tellingly, the outrage that Canizaro and the Urban Land
Institute's proposal sparked among working-class
homeowners only reinforced poor people's
marginalization. The relevant unit of protest against
the ULI plan, its moral center, became homeownership.
But what of the tens of thousands who weren't
homeowners before Katrina? Who is factoring their
interests into the equation? Did Barbara Bush speak for
history, ratified by the policy circle at Harvard, when
she said,  "So many of the people in the arena here,
you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is
working very well for them."

The Gang of 200's petition reproduces and reinforces
this disregard for the idea that poor people may have,
or deserve to have, emotional attachments to a place
they consider home. This is one way in which the
stereotype of the "urban underclass" -- which Wilson in
particular has done so much to legitimize -- is
insidious: it defines poor people's lives as only
objects for "our" administration (and just who makes up
the circle of "we" anyway?). It effectively divests the
poor of civic voice, thus reprising 19th century
republican treatment of those without property as
ineligible for full citizenship.

We are braced for the counterattack from the Gang of
200. First, they will howl about the obvious
differences between Indian removal and the Negro
removal that they advocate. We are more struck by the
similarities. Naiveté and hubris can go hand-in-hand.
Wilson et. al. rushed to tout their silly pet idea
without a whit's thought of the social, political, and
economic dynamics and tensions that might be at play in
the debate over how to reconstruct New Orleans. Their
sole proviso is the lame reassurance that the city's
distinctive diversity should be preserved. They gave no
thought that Republicans might link the city's
repopulation to their desire to gut Democratic power in
New Orleans and move Louisiana into the column of
reliably Republican states. They apparently also failed
to consider the potential that their idée fixe would
play into the hands of real estate development
interests and others who relish any opportunity to
dissipate New Orleans's black electoral majority. Such
talk began well before the floodwaters began to recede.

Recently, a politically connected white lawyer in the
city remarked that Katrina provided an opportunity to
rebuild a smaller, quainter New Orleans, more like
Charleston. (Charleston, of course, has an ample poor
black servant class for its tourist economy, but a
white electoral majority.) And speaking of Charleston,
a low-income housing project near downtown was
condemned and razed after Hurricane Hugo in 1989
because the flood and storm surge supposedly had
rendered the land on which it stood too toxic to afford
human habitation. The site subsequently became home to
the aquarium, a key node in the Charleston's tourist
redevelopment. Rumors abound that luxury condos may
also now be in the works for the site.

Next, the Gang of 200 will accuse us of defending
segregated housing and opposing their proposal to
integrate blacks into mixed income and mixed race
neighborhoods. This does not withstand even a moment's
scrutiny. Without doubt, many poor black people aspire
to move to a "better neighborhood," and they should
have the option to do so. If the Gang of 200 were
serious about helping them, first on their policy
agenda would be a proposal for massive enforcement of
existing laws against housing discrimination, in order
to drive a wedge through the wall of white segregation.
The problem here is that relocation is being enacted
through a state-sponsored resettlement policy, and
notwithstanding promises for "traditional support
services," these poor families (and not all of them are
poor!), will be relocated in poor, segregated
neighborhoods. The only certain outcome is that New
Orleans will be depleted of its poor black population
in neighborhoods that are ripe for development.

It is astounding that the Gang of 200 do not see the
expropriation of poor neighborhoods and the violation
of human rights. And they remain strangely oblivious of
their potential for playing into the hands of the
retrograde political forces that would use their call
to justify displacement. Well-intentioned, respectable
scholars as they are, they live no less than anyone
else within a political culture shaped largely by class
experience and perception. And the poverty research
industry, of which Wilson is an avatar and leading
light, has been predicated for decades on the premise
that poor people are defective, incapable of knowing
their own best interests, that they are solely objects
of social policy, never its subjects.  Worst of all,
they provide liberal cover for those who have already
put a resettlement policy into motion that is
reactionary and racist at its core.
____

Adolph Reed is a noted author and professor of
political science at the University of Pennsylvania. He
was Co-Chair of the Chicago Jobs With Justice Education
Committee. He serves on the board of Public Citizen,
Inc. and is a member of the Interim National Council of
the Labor Party, and national co-chair of the Labor
Party's campaign for Free Higher Education. Prof. Reed
can be contacted at [log in to unmask]

Stephen Steinberg teaches in the Urban Studies
Department at Queens College. His most recent book,
Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in
American Thought and Policy, received the Oliver
Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist
Scholarship. In addition to his scholarly publications,
he is a frequent contributor New Politics. Email at
[log in to unmask]