Ten Years Since: A Meditation on New Orleans

 


" The news media’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina created looters of human beings. There were orders to shoot those human beings on sight. This year, we have all been inundated with the photographs and video clips of human beings suffering and dying. We have all seen them: some in choke holds, others riddled with bullets. People hanged or laid out on the concrete. This year has been the endless looping on television of human beings who look like me, rendered black and dead. Ten years since Katrina and 10 years among the undead, I recall having had my humanity interrupted, my community made fodder to a culture in which gazing upon our deaths is an act as simple as a few guilt-free clicks. These days, I share my culture with those who zoom their lenses in on me and my son—those who demand with point-and-shoots to know if we are a part of the festivities?"

" There is so much about the last 10 years that I would rather forget, experiences I would remake. But it is not possible to go backward. There is only what is, and right now the stakes are high. New Orleans changes for good, a little bit at a time, every day. Houses in my neighborhood flip at sometimes three times their pre-Katrina “worth.” For white families in the new New Orleans, the median income has grown at triple the rate of black families’ income. It’s no wonder many are insistent that New Orleans is back and better than ever. There are roughly 100,000 fewer black people in the metro area. Old people out; new people in. "

read the story by Kristina Kay Robinson >> 

Ten Years Since: A Meditation on New Orleans | The Nation:

illustration by Tim Robinson