Sociology essay By Atif Gagguturu

Kimber Rivers started a documentary about her experience with Hurricane Katrina. The

US military was there to help give supplies out. She didn’t have transportation to get out even

though she wanted to get out. There was a mandatory evacuation order of New Orleans;

however, there was no public transportation, so those without private transportation, around

100,000 people, stayed in New Orleans as they could not afford to leave. Parts of New Orleans

flooded. Some people were forced to see the flooding themselves in their houses, such as Kimber

Rivers. There weren’t enough rescue units. Bush refused to move troops from Iraq to help with

hurricane Katrina relief. The National Guard did not check every place even two weeks after the

hurricane. There was a loss in the trust for the government after its lackluster response for some.

Hundreds of thousands were not given adequate food and shelter even after 100 hours after the

hurricane. People just started walking to better grounds and out of New Orleans. Others just

started living anywhere, such as a school. A lot of US troops from places affected by Katrina

would lose their livelihoods and homes. Mail hasn’t been coming through. FEMA promised

around 2000 dollars for damages but the wait for it was a long time and not everyone got it due

to some missing information. Prisoners were still inside but they led some out. To many of the

poor, the government did nothing to help them. Some people came back as it was too hard to

leave. Reopening was a celebration. The downtown area and french quarter of New Orleans were

given priority with the poor having to get back on their own. People are rebuilding their city and

themselves. Ms. Rivers made a rap in order to vent her frustrations about the government’s

response to Katrina. Her experiences would mirror other experiences about hurricane Katrina

and its aftermath. Race, poverty, and social capital would all affect peoples’ experiences with

Katrina.
Sociology essay By Atif Gagguturu

Race did have an effect on how people responded to hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

First was the perception of Black Americans in New Orleans and those affected by the hurricane.

The media at the time showed “hour after hour, day after day, images of black Americans

desperate for assistance after the storm, [with] many viewers could not help but “see” race and

racism at work” (Elliott). This constant reinforcement of black people in this condition was a

classic perception theory as due to racial prejudice, black people are inherently viewed as

inferior both economically and socially. It also shows racial bias as both in this study and the

documentary; it was mainly black Americans that were shown needing supplies and affected by

the hurricane. There was the actual impact of race on the hurricane as “‘blacks’ friends and

family were more likely to be adversely affected by the storm and even more widely dispersed

than whites” (Elliot). This is because poverty is statistically more common among black

Americans, and those in poverty were more likely to be affected by the hurricane. Black America

is more likely to live in poverty because segregation made education opportunities scarce, and it

has taken time for people to catch up. This has made Black Americans less likely to have good

jobs and good homes, key necessities to get out of poverty. This can be shown as “the “average”

black worker in New Orleans is actually closer to seven times more likely to have lost his or her

job than the “average” white worker” (Elliot), giving in to the cycle of poverty many Black

Americans find themselves in.

Poverty had a big effect on increasing the effects of Hurricane Katrina. For example, the

“mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, ordered a mandatory evacuation by 9.30 a.m. on Sunday”

(Moynihan 2) for the city of New Orleans, and many wondered “why everyone didn’t just leave

New Orleans. But the truth is that many of them couldn’t leave — as the Times reported — and

the government did little to nothing to help them get out of Katrina’s path before the hurricane
Sociology essay By Atif Gagguturu

hit” (Lopez). In the documentary, there was no public transportation available for people to

evacuate the city, making many of the poor unable to leave as they could not afford

transportation. This idea that the poor should have done better to escape the hurricane is an

example of labeling theory. Poor people are labeled in a way that makes them deviant and wrong

in the eyes of American society. It also shows a certain sense of victim-blaming towards the poor

as they were expected to get out of the city and pull their own bootstraps even as “shortages in

food, water, and other supplies grew” (Pao). They couldn’t afford to, and there was little to no

help given towards them.

The amount of social capital had a great effect on how the hurricane-affected people. For

example, “there was an exchange of physical, emotional, and financial support across

homophilous network links that facilitated how families managed throughout the storm”

(Hawkins and Maurer 1784). People naturally are going to use their closest relationships to deal

with this first threat, and as a group, families will decide their best course of action. While some

people decided to leave, others such as “Janice’s entire family, including her ex-husband,

weathered the storm together” (Hawkins and Maurer 1784). Multiple families stayed either to

take care of families who couldn’t move or didn’t want to. Many who stayed went “helping to

rescue stranded individuals or providing supplies until the authorities came, exemplifying

bonding social capital at the neighborhood level” (Hawkins and Maurer 1784). This was because

while the hurricane was actually happening, all senses of class went out, and only the need to

survive and help others remained. Despite this, some lingering tensions concerning race

remained as some Black Americans had to go find “exemplifying heterogeneous linking social

capital, by interacting with networks beyond” (Hawkins and Maurer 1785) their own, suggesting

that some Black Americans lacked networks that would have been helpful during hurricane
Sociology essay By Atif Gagguturu

Katrina. Neighborhood groups such as the GCIA “expanded beyond its homophilous network to

generate linking social capital connections to other communities and to organizations outside of

New Orleans” (Hawkins and Maurer 1787). This was a necessary step in combating the

hurricane’s effects. This is also an example on how relationships change in the face of a major

event. Not all social capital was good as “some participants were influenced by friends and

relatives to stay, despite having resources and the ability to flee” (Hawkins and Maurer 1788),

and “negative stereotypes affected how and whether participants received services” (Hawkins

and Maurer 1788). People are influenced by others, and a lot of bad choices will be made due to

the influence of others.

People’s identity makes race, social capital, and poverty intersect in their experience of

the hurricane. Many people in New Orleans are Black Americans and poor with different social

capital than other Americans who are poor. In the documentary, most people who could not

afford to leave were poor and were often than not Black. While those who were poor had a hard

time recovering, those who were poor and black were less likely to get a job again as they were

already disadvantaged in the job market due to being presumed to be not good job prospects.

Those who were poor and lacked good social capital had a harder time getting cash with FEMA.

Those who are poor and had social capital that encouraged them to stay were most likely to stay.

People overlook how being both Black and poor makes it really difficult to get back on their feet.

Employers are really distrusting of them because of the negative stereotypes of poor Black

Americans. People also tend to overlook the resources needed to evacuate as there was no public

transportation given in the evacuation order.

In conclusion, the effects of Hurricane Katrina were greatly influenced by race, poverty,

and social capital in ways that, prior to the documentary, I didn’t understand. I understood how

poverty could make fighting and surviving Hurricane Katrina difficult, but I did not comprehend

how race could be a problem. I did not realize that being Black would still be considered a

barrier even after a natural disaster. I also underestimated how social capital can make or break a

response toward Hurricane Katrina.

Elliott, J. R., & Pais, J. (2006). Race, class, and Hurricane Katrina: Social differences in

human responses to disaster. Social Science Research, 35(2), 295–321. doi:

10.1016/j.ssresearch.2006.02.003

Hawkins, R. L., & Maurer, K. (2009). Bonding, Bridging and Linking: How Social Capital

Operated in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. British Journal of Social Work,

40(6), 1777–1793. doi: 10.1093/bjsw/bcp087

Lopez. (2015, August 28). 7 facts about Hurricane Katrina that show just how incompetent

the government response was. Retrieved from

https://www.vox.com/2015/8/23/9191907/hurricane-katrina

Moynihan, D. P. M. P. (n.d.). The Response to Hurricane Katrina . Retrieved from

https://irgc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Hurricane_Katrina_full_case_study_web.pdf

Pao, M. (2015, August 27). Swept Up In The Storm: Hurricane Katrina's Key Players, Then

And Now. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2015/08/27/434385285/swept-up-in-the-

storm-hurricane-katrinas-key-players-then-and-now