Did Hurricane Katrina reveal a historic reality?

It seems that Tucker only opposes assaults on the poor when they originate from white society. She can only detect the heinous disregard for the social conditions that plague the poor when they emerge outside the race. But when the flag of attack waves broadly in black culture, especially under the leadership of an embittered Afristocrat such as Bill Cosby—an attack that is often joined by figures like talk show host Larry Elder or writer Shelby Steele—Tucker can only join the cavalry and ride roughshod over the nuanced and complex positions she otherwise upholds. As Tucker well knows, Cosby’s words count even more because he is a celebrated comic whose race-neutral politics have endeared him to a white audience that he has never tested, or turned against, in the way he has the black poor.

Of course, Cosby doesn’t stand alone. Katrina’s waters washed up hard against the class bigotry of all those black figures such as economists Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams who chimed in on Bill Cosby’s attack on the poor. There are many Afristocrats who actively fought against the poor, or who simply forgot them. There are even some who, like President George Bush, don’t care about poor blacks. Such views prevailed even among some black elites in the Delta. The black upper classes in eastern New Orleans, for example, have educated their children at predominantly black magnet schools such as McDonogh No. 35 Senior High School, Warren Easton Fundamental, and Eleanor McMain Magnet Secondary School, while the masses of poor blacks suffer in substandard schools. When we black folk rail against the moral failings of the poor while overlooking the inequality and deprivation they confront, whether in New Orleans or in Washington, D.C., we only inflame the suffering of the vulnerable without relieving their plight.

There is, too, a curious color dynamic that sadly persists in our culture. In fact, New Orleans invented the brown paper bag party—usually at a gathering in a home—where anyone darker than the bag attached to the door was denied entrance. The brown bag criterion survives as a metaphor for how the black cultural elite quite literally establishes caste along color lines within black life. On my many trips to New Orleans, whether to lecture at one of its universities or colleges, to preach from one of its pulpits, or to speak at an empowerment seminar during the annual Essence Music Festival, I have observed color politics at work among black folk. The cruel color code has to be defeated by our love for one another.

Of course, it is a marvelous sight to see so many black folk rally around the poor after Katrina. The press noted how Katrina was a “generation-defining catastrophe” that galvanized black generosity and solidarity throughout the nation. Black churches around the country raised millions of dollars for relief efforts. Several artists held or participated in fund-raisers. There was the S.O.S. (Saving OurSelves) Relief Telethon broadcast on BET and cosponsored by the National Urban League, the American Red Cross, the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, and Essence Communications, which raised $10 million. The Jazz at Lincoln Center’s “Higher Ground” relief benefit was spearheaded by New Orleans native and the center’s artistic director Wynton Marsalis. There were several fund-raisers hosted by hip-hop artists, including Mississippi native David Banner’s Heal the Hood Hurricane Relief Concert. There were also extensive fund-raising efforts made by New Orleans natives Master P and Juvenile, Chicago’s Twista, and Brooklyn writer and activist Kevin Powell—joined by Common, Kanye West, Mos Def, and Talib Kweli. Many black professional athletes also visited the Gulf Coast and contributed money and time to relief efforts.

We should be reminded, however, that the black poor are flooded daily by material misery; they are routinely buffeted by harsh racial winds. The obvious absence of the black blessed at times of ongoing difficulty—to defend and protect the poor in principled fashion—underscores the woefully episodic character of black social regard. Lots of well-to-do black folk are doing a lot to help, but too many of us have left the black poor stranded on islands of social isolation and class alienation. Episodes of goodwill and compassion are no replacement for structural change. As Martin Luther King, Jr., said at Riverside Church exactly a year before he was murdered:

“On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

Charity is no substitute for justice. If we never challenge a social order that allows some to accumulate wealth—even if they decide to help the less fortunate—while others are shortchanged, then even acts of kindness end up supporting unjust arrangements. We must never ignore the injustices that make charity necessary, or the inequalities that make it possible.

What made Kanye West’s defense of the black poor so admirable is that it suggested the willingness of a rich black celebrity to sacrifice his reputation, perhaps even his livelihood, and surely his comfort, to speak out on behalf of his less-­fortunate brothers and sisters. The week after he was featured on the cover of Time magazine as the “smartest man in pop music,” West made his stand against Bush and conservative social neglect on television. West’s comments brought a predictable firestorm of controversy and criticism. Television ingenue Kelly Carlson, star of the series “Nip/Tuck,” was offended. “I don’t think a lot of people this day and age dislike black people,” the young white starlet said. “I mean I think we’ve kind of moved on from that. So to go on television and say that, I think it’s tacky, I think it’s very low rent.”

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