Old divides, from New York to New Orleans

But not in New Orleans.In a city where 69 per cent of the population is black and poor and now overwhelmingly dead or destitute, injustice has taken a more familiar, and depressing, social form. Disaster and material affliction in this instance has all the trappings of race and class hierarchy. For many in this country today and in the world, it bears a face that most closely resembles the features of President George W. Bush.

Some years ago, I had read an essay by Ian Jack on the sinking of the Titanic. Jack had presented an interesting piece of statistic about the percentage of passengers saved from the sinking liner. The British Board of Trade Inquiry had arranged the figures relating to the rescued passengers by age, gender and class.

In the first class: 34 per cent of the men, 97 per cent of the women, 100 per cent of the children.

In the second class: eight per cent of men, 84 per cent of women, 100 per cent of the children.

In the third class: 12 per cent of men, 55 per cent of women, 30 per cent of the children.

Jack had noted that ‘‘the usual juxtaposition’’ was to ‘‘compare the percentages of first to third class children, or of first-class men and third-class children’’.

But the more interesting statistic, he argued, related to the percentage regarding the second-class men.

Only eight per cent were saved even though they had access to the boat deck.

Could it be, Jack had asked, that these members of the class of ‘‘middling tradesmen and professionals of Britain and North America’’ had ‘‘behaved more nobly and stoically than the men above and below them?’’

THE question is a puzzle and I was reminded of it last week when I read in a New York Times article that the median income in the black part of New Orleans was $ 31,369 while in the predominantly white part of the city the median income was $ 41,265. The latter figure is just below the national average, which would suggest that New Orleans as a whole would not be considered affluent.

But what is remarkable is the relative lack of difference between the two averages. It records an imbalance, no doubt, but by itself it does not lead anyone to anticipate the scene that has been unfolding on our television screens this month. Why were the people crammed into the Houston Astrodome all black? Why is it that what the Reverend Jesse Jackson said the other day at New Orleans airport, ‘‘This looks like a hull of a slave ship’’, rings so shamefully true?

The poor everywhere are treated with criminal neglect and contempt. America could hardly be an exception. But the statistic I have quoted from the NYT would support the argument that poverty was compounded by race.

IF the tragedy in New York had united America, the disaster in New Orleans has divided it. The doubts and debates over American involvement in Iraq have been doubled. A black pastor at a Houston church asked his congregation, ‘‘Are you telling me we can coordinate a relief effort on the other side of the world and we can’t do it here?’’ Various commentators have been repeating the fact that many of the American soldiers that have been killed in Iraq have been the sons and daughters of poor families of colour.

The sad truth is the dead die over and over again. The deaths of several thousand innocents in the 9/11 attacks were used as a moral justification for deaths visited upon countless innocents in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many thousands have perished in New Orleans in the wake of a terrible storm. If those unlucky people are lucky, their deaths will be used to save lives being lost elsewhere, starting of course with Iraq.

The author teaches at Vassar College in the United States, and is the author of Husband of a Fanatic