Cover Story Liberal Bad Faith in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina by Adolph Reed and 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: "Š 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.
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