After Katrina, Rebuild National Dialogue on Class and Race

Are Americans ready to make poverty alleviation, class and race priority issues?

In the summer of 2004, the United States celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. A year before Hurricane Katrina's tempest winds exposed America's entrenched poverty and fractured race relations for all to see, many, including myself, observed that we had come a long way but had much further to go before we reach the goal of true racial justice.

Even then it seemed clear to me that our nation's leaders were not pursuing a vision for addressing the persistent poverty problems that disproportionately affect black and Hispanic people in America. The economy, Iraq, healthcare, gay rights and a host of other issues took precedence over poverty and race last year, especially during the Presidential campaign.

Hurricane Katrina has blown the roofs off of a lot of people's latent concerns about class and race in America. The now-obvious truth is that far too many people lead tough, hand-to-mouth existences in our nation. They are literally immobilized, and when disaster strikes, they are stuck smack in the path of almost every hardship.

Public opinion polls have consistently pointed to disparities in perception on the issue of discrimination, with blacks and Hispanics much more likely than whites to see the existence of the discrimination in the workplace, education and healthcare.

The aftermath of Katrina has produced a widespread awareness of the pervasiveness of poverty in the US, but still no consensus on what to do about it. Two new polls show some big racial differences in perceptions of the government's response to Hurricane Katrina. A Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll shows six in 10 blacks say class and color were definitely a factor in the government's fumbling relief effort, but most whites disagree. An ABC News/Washington Post poll also found disparities, with majorities of whites saying the problems are not an indication of broader racial inequality; although majorities of blacks disagree.

There were a number of points of agreement as well. The Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll finds that majorities of both whites and blacks say the government spends "too little" on addressing poverty and seven in 10 of both races also say government agencies in New Orleans "should have been better prepared" for the hurricane.

Are Americans ready to make poverty alleviation, class and race priority issues? This is a case when we need to look deeper than polling.

After such an enormous and visible tragedy that devastated so many minority families, I am not surprised at all that Americans would respond very positively to polling questions that ask whether or not we should make addressing these problems a priority. But look below the surface.

As a nation, in all of our communities, in every state across the America, we must talk honestly and fully about the trade-offs we're willing to make in order to really have an impact on poverty and the resources we're honestly willing to invest.

Some of the post-Katrina polling is asking Americans where their priorities lie -- whether they are willing to raise taxes, cut other government programs or scale back rebuilding in order to pay for it all. But polling alone cannot produce the deep, probing, substantial national dialogue that needs to occur in order to weigh the options and make the tough choices. In our experience, the best way for the nation to come to grips with this kind of complex set of issues is to work through the basic options in living rooms across the nation, in classrooms and in public meetings and forums. Until that happens, we'll just end up back where we started.

Let's be honest: many among us accept the idea that there will always be poor people in America. Many believe that the disproportionate representation of racial minorities in the ranks of the poor is largely the result of distant history or individual irresponsibility. Many in America simply don't believe that race and class are issues that they must do anything about. Until we talk about what can be done and what it will cost us to do it, we won't make any real progress and Katrina's damage will last well after the physical structures are rebuilt.