Content area
Full text
INTRODUCTION
Race has been thrown into the headlines in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and the media has been forced to discuss racial inequality (Violanti 2005). Public response to the hurricane reveals reliance on the myth of meritocracy and color-blind ideology, where individuals are blamed for their circumstances, while structural inequalities are not taken into account (Bonilla-Silva 2003). Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and through media coverage it was evident that those who were not able to leave were disproportionately poor, elderly, and Black. Pictures of Black people waving flags as they waited days on their roof without food and water, and those of Whites "finding" food while Black people were "looting," highlighted racial disparities in this country (Ralli 2005).
President George W. Bush's mother, former First Lady Barbara Bush, toured the Astrodome in Houston where many residents of New Orleans were taken when the city was evacuated. On the tour she was quoted as saying: "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them" (New York Times 2005). Comments such as this one from high-profile individuals neglect structural inequalities in the U.S. and have sparked discussion in the media regarding why certain people remained in the city while others were able to get out before the hurricane hit. These conversations have highlighted and questioned the role of race in relation to Katrina, with great variation in opinion between racial groups. A poll conducted by the Pew Research Center found that "two-thirds of African-Americans said the government's response to the crisis would have been faster if most of the victims had been white, while 77 percent of whites disagreed" (New York Times 2005).
Using ideologies of meritocracy and color-blind ideology, I analyze responses to the circumstances surrounding Hurricane Katrina. I find that when a public event highlights racial inequality after a very public disaster, people continue to rely on these dominant ideologies. I would have expected individual responses to show not only compassion, but also increased racial recognition because the hurricane itself and surrounding media coverage brought race to the forefront of discussion in the United States.
MERITOCRACY AND COLOR-BLIND RACIAL IDEOLOGY
This country operates...