New Orleans could lose 80 percent of its African-American population in the wake of Hurricane Katrina unless there is a special effort to help poor people return to the city, says a report on the storm's impact.
The study, based on satellite maps of New Orleans and the nearby coast and census data, confirms what many residents suspected: Katrina inflicted disproportionate damage on poor neighborhoods with high unemployment and a high number of renters. These people were unlikely to have home insurance or the necessary resources to return and rebuild.
In the city of New Orleans, three-quarters of the 354,000 people who lived in the areas worst damaged by the storm were African-American, and 29.2 percent were poor, the study found. Nearly 53 percent were renting and did not own their own home. More than 10 percent were unemployed.
"The danger in the current thinking about rebuilding is that it specifically excludes important elements of the population whose neighborhoods were destroyed, and who won't find a place in the future city. Disproportionately that means people who were African-American and below the average income of the city," said John Logan, a sociologist at Brown University, Rhode Island, and author of the study.
People living in public housing are said to have even less chance to return to their city. The local authorities have closed all public housing in the affected areas.
"If the future city were limited to the population previously living in zones undamaged by Katrina it would risk losing about 50 percent of its white residents, but more than 80 percent of its black population. This is why the continuing question about the hurricane is this: whose city will be rebuilt?" the study says.
African-Americans have already voiced fears that the new city to emerge from the wreckage of Katrina will bear little resemblance to the New Orleans of old -- specifically that it will no longer have a black majority.
Mayor Ray Nagin recognized those fears earlier this month when he pledged that he would rebuild New Orleans as a "chocolate city."
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
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