Question

traduçao desse texto furacão expõe questões de classe e raça

Answer 1

Hurricane exposes issues of class, race Although TV correspondents covering Hurricane Katrina avoid commenting on the obvious, their cameras hold back nothing. The people who couldn't or wouldn't leave New Orleans are overwhelmingly poor and black. As are the looters. The images may surprise people whose visual pictures of the city are of tipsy partiers on Bourbon Street or plump chefs in French Quarter restaurants. But the vicious winds of Katrina exposed a far different reality. The Census Bureau reported this week that the number of Americans living in poverty rose last year to 12.7%, the fourth consecutive year the poverty rate has risen. New Orleans' poverty rate is nearly double the national rate, and 40% of the city's children live in poverty. More than two-thirds of the city's residents are African-American. Those are the people gathered in desperation at the Morial Convention Center, their shattered and messy lives on full public display. Those are the faces behind the dry statistics in the government reports. Failure to address that reality appears to be a central reason that New Orleans' meager and mismanaged disaster plan failed. Many of the poor lacked cars, leaving them unable to escape the city. Lacking money, many also surely lacked places to go. Lacking education, many may not have grasped the threat. And lacking good health, many were too weak to survive. Those shortcomings were not addressed. The result is the heartbreaking pictures coming out of the city Thursday. They were reminiscent of Third World refugee camps. None of this, of course, excuses the looting, except perhaps to obtain food and water to survive. And it certainly doesn't excuse the shooting. Some looters even fired shots at rescuers Thursday, interfering with their critical missions as the city descended into near-anarchy. But lawlessness is the inevitable companion of mass poverty, and a threat to civil order should have been anticipated. There seems little doubt that order will be restored swiftly. Police and National Guard forces headed for New Orleans certainly have the capability. And there is no doubt that Americans will respond with an outpouring of generosity to citizens in need, just as they did for the tsunami victims of Southeast Asia. Sadly, there is also no doubt that when New Orleans eventually returns to some form of normalcy, its poor will once again become invisible. At least until the next disaster strikes.