New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Stanley Crouch: Katrina's lesson is this: The people come first

New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Stanley Crouch: Katrina's lesson is this: The people come firstKatrina's lesson is this: The people come first

Many feel that when something goes wrong, as in the mishandling of the first response to Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and Mississippi, heads should roll. I support the spectacle of heads rolling for reasons beyond the fun of seeing incompetent or corrupt fools in high places brought down. I prefer to see those heads used like bowling balls that knock over the tenpins holding bad or inadequate policies in place.

Now that the critics are many, the elephants are stampeding away from what is a fundamental poverty of vision, which gives the impression that the GOP has no concern for ethnic groups beyond white folks. Most black people believe that things would have gone better for the people of New Orleans if they had been white. Most white people do not believe this. Hmmm.

What the tragedy in New Orleans provides us with is a metaphor for all that is wrong not only on the level of color but on the level of poverty. The people should always be first, but there should be personal responsibility when possible, and federal protection when necessary.

The local, state and federal incompetence surrounding Hurricane Katrina is not alone in this mess. What makes matters worse are the layers of traditional New Orleans and Louisiana corruption, and the defeatist form of disregard that out-of-touch conservatives consider an aspect of tough love. President Bush at least admitted that the federal government dropped the ball and promised massive rebuilding. Hooray for him.

Admission of bumbling is not the actual problem that has to be addressed in long-range terms. We are at a provocative crossroads in our nation. The full meaning of New Orleans actually challenges us to invent something better than what we presently have.

What we need at this point is a reconsideration of all that is done to protect those at the lowest levels of our society. The donkeys are calling for a domestic Marshall Plan that sounds good to the gallery, but is not enough in itself. We need something much more thorough than merely spending money and handing out contracts to builders who are hot to make New Orleans a mall that celebrates Mardi Gras while serving gumbo and po'boy sandwiches.

Part of what those down in the hole suffer from is often a lack of knowledge about how to protect themselves and how to develop skills that could serve them in a much more demanding market than the world has ever known.

We have successfully beaten down much of the ignorance that long supported bigotry toward so-called minorities and women. Such victories cannot be dismissed by any sane person. So it is impossible to believe that we cannot successfully fight the intellectual genocide witnessed in substandard schools and in the numbskull codes that too many confuse with "a different culture" that should be respected. No backward and self-destructive code should ever be respected.

We need a realistic set of perspectives based on information that is rather easily found because all successes in the pernicious areas of lower-class culture are part of the public record. They provide all of the direction we need.

Every aspect of future social policy needs to be based on approaches that have proven themselves viable in the flesh-and-blood world, not the intellectual crematoriums of the academy and partisan think tanks.

Yes, the tragic example of New Orleans might be beckoning a better way for us to go in this nation. Whatever happens, we can be very sure that the methods that have so pathetically failed right before everyone's eyes need to be kicked to the curb.

Originally published on September 19, 2005