An “Act of God”: Race, Religion, and Policy in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina (original) (raw)
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Natural Disasters as Moral Lessons: Nazianzus and New Orleans
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In the fourth century, Gregory of Nazianzus argued that cattle plague, drought, hailstorms, and crop loss in Nazianzus were caused by the unrighteous activity of the city's residents. In 2005, evangelical leader Pat Robertson raised the possibility that the disaster of Hurricane Katrina was a direct result of the fact that 'we have killed over 40 million unborn babies in America'. One year later, African American humanist Anthony Pinn wrote that the aftermath of Katrina was a moral indictment of the oppressive structures inherent in U.S. society. Though separated by time and ideology, these three claims share the assumption that religious and moral lessons can be learned from natural disasters. We analyze these responses in order to demonstrate how religious interpretations of disasters can move from a common assumption to widely diverse moral arguments, and to urge that scholars provide more historical and theological context when analyzing religious claims about natural disasters.
A Rhetorical Response to Hurricane Katrina
In this piece I look at Hurricane Katrina through the lens of rhetoric. I explore how, in press coverage, interviews and resident testimonials, symbols can be used to state and to counter-state, to create suspense and surprise, to reveal more than one or even two sides to any story. Key questions asked include: How do catastrophic and ineffable events, whether considered acts of God or acts of man, become controversies contested on the symbolic level? How can rhetoric be mobilized to persuade disparate communities/audiences to act according to a shared vision of the common good? And, how is humanity argued for in a contentious climate? I argue that rhetorical theory allows us to go about an exploration of the dialectical tensions that arise among conflicting communities as they argue from their own linguistic and symbolic systems. It can reveal the very real costs of resisting or identifying with competing notions of universality and community as they are used to argue for humanity. I share my hope that we can learn to reconsider the effects of submerged particularities within unifying terms which have been historically deployed in national and international rhetorics of reconstruction.
An Unnatural Disaster: The Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina
An Unnatural Disaster: The Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, 2005
In the weeks since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, much attention has been paid to the manifest failure of government rescue efforts. But a broader view is in order, one focused less on the apparent incompetence and unpreparedness of the government officials charged with managing such emergencies, and more on the failures of policy-making and resource allocation leading up to the disaster. An examination of those failures leads to a simple conclusion: the hurricane could not have been prevented, and some flooding may have been inevitable, but at least some, and perhaps much, of the damage visited upon New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina could have been prevented by wiser public policy choices. The choices that failed New Orleans are the subject of this report. It examines the environmental decisions that robbed the area around New Orleans of the natural environmental features that might have absorbed floodwaters before they toppled levees. It looks at the policy choices not merely the incompetence that resulted in the governments feeble emergency response. It identifies the serious environmental challenges now facing the New Orleans area resulting from environmental policy-making that allowed toxic chemicals to be produced, handled, and stored in such a manner that flooding would loose them on residents. It discusses the effect of energy policy choices on Katrina, as well as the implications of Katrina for future choices. It explores the environmental justice lessons to be learned from the Katrina disaster how environmental policy disfavors poor and minority Americans. It concludes with a series of challenging questions to be examined by investigators and policymakers as they reshape government policy to prevent Katrina-style environmental and policy disasters from compounding natural disasters in the future.