Did Hurricane Katrina reveal a historic reality?

New Orleans rapper Juvenile, best known in the mainstream for the trend-setting single “Back That Thang Up,” lost his home and cars in the flood, but was critical of the poverty and corruption that plagued his beloved hometown before Katrina. “All we lost was our home,” he said. “A lot of people lost their lives. But we lost beyond a house or a door. We lost an environment. So we lost everybody. Everybody lost. We lost that spirit ... There ain’t nothing like New Orleans. We got spirit. We the smallest city, the highest in poverty. We was the lowest in the education system. We was just about to go on strike with the teachers. The school board system was corrupt. Our police system is corrupt. Our judicial system is corrupt.” Juvenile criticized the federal government but also suggested that, given the extreme poverty of many residents, the storm clouds of Katrina may have contained a silver lining. “It didn’t take a hurricane for me to do nothing for New Orleans,” he said, “’cause like Chris Rock said, we was f***** up before the hurricane hit. Y’all should’ve been sending us ... FEMA. We’ve been f***** up. For a lot of us that sh** was a blessing.”

Perhaps the most articulate, well-spoken supporter of Kanye West’s perspective is an NBA athlete whose political bona fides were established long before Katrina. “I definitely agree with Kanye West,” said the Washington Wizards’ Etan Thomas, who raised cash and gathered supplies for the hurricane survivors. “Had this been a rich, lily-white suburban area that got hit, you think they would have had to wait five days to get food or water? When the hurricane hit in Florida, Bush made sure those people got help the next day. But now, when you are dealing with a majority poorer class of black people, it takes five days? Then you still don’t send help but instead send the National Guard to ‘maintain order’? Are you kidding me?” The author of More Than an Athlete, a collection of verse that assails racism, the death penalty, and materialism, Thomas has made a conscious choice to embrace the heroic legacies of outspoken athletes who made their marks in their professions as a springboard to raising social consciousness. “I admire athletes of the past, like Bill Russell, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, John Carlos and Tommie Smith, Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar] — athletes who used their position as a platform to speak out on social issues and stand up for a cause. Basketball is not my life. A quote I live by is: ‘I speak my mind because biting my tongue would make my pride bleed.’”

Kanye West’s words, and those of the figures who supported him, suggest that not nearly enough of us are invested in consistently raising our voices for the voiceless. Narrow career interests and risk aversion define our number. Too many of us are “safe Negroes” who don’t realize that we can never really be safe until all black people are safe. Kanye West saw his identity tied to the identity of the poor, and realized that the people who were drowning were “my people.” That simple act of identification is the primal scream of recognition of kin through the bonds of shared history and conscience.

Excerpted from “Come Hell or High Water” by Michael Eric Dyson. Copyright © 2006 by Michael Eric Dyson. Published by Perseus Books Group. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt can be used without permission of the publisher.

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