Katrina and Justice and Equality

I share the difficulty with the images Amy describes.  We all have seen over the years images depicting the horrors faced by refugees in third world countries.  But the images of people in our own country, rich as it is in so many ways, without any food or water for days, using the floor as toilets, sitting among rotting cadavers, or women with infants (in one report I read) being given two diapers and told to scrape them off and reuse them, are hard to accept.

I agree with Amy that this raises questions about how our vision of justice and equality "can inform a push toward social structures which reflect a commitment in which no one – in this country or in any country – is left without what they need to lead a dignified human life."  It also not only raises questions about how we treat the poor among us, but forces us to confront some difficult issues about race in this country.  Ann Althouse asks over on her blog, "Were the provisions for flood prevention and for evacuation and shelter so inadequate because mostly black people were affected? Would the rescues have come more quickly if the victims were white? Would viewers and reporters express more outrage at the pace of relief if we were seeing white victims?"  Good questions.