Has Lightning Struck a Hollow Oak?

I started this yesterday, only to be greeted by a much better essay in my mailbox before completing it. I'm posting this anyway to record my thoughts at the time....

Perhaps, had I been more familiar with New Orleans, I would have made this connection earlier. No matter. Robert Tracinski at TIA Daily did a magnificent job yesterday of providing the necessary information to evaluate the catastrophe that has hit New Orleans, which is to say, to correctly identify the actual catastrophe, which pre-dates the recent natural disaster.

In today's issue, Tracinski points to this article, which describes something that I should have suspected based on watching the similar decline of my home town of Jackson, Mississippi, and its similar end result: a crime-ridden city whose remaining economic vitality is a leftover of the past.

[I]t's up to New Orleans, not the feds, to dig deep within itself to rebuild its economic and social infrastructure before the tourists ever will flock back to pump cash into the city's economy. It will take a miracle. New Orleans has experienced a steady brain drain and fiscal drain for decades, as affluent corporations and individuals have fled, leaving behind a large population of people dependent on the government. Socially, New Orleans is one of America's last helpless cities -- just at the moment when it must do all it can to help itself survive.

The article also gives the following description of its crime problem: "New Orleans teems with crime, and the NOPD can't keep order on a good day."

While the article focuses rightly on the value of good government, it is important to remember that we live in a republic. Our government, insofar as who an electorate will regard as acceptable, is a reflection of the broader culture. So yes. New Orleans has a corrupt and incompetent government, which is failing it at its darkest hour. But who tolerated this state of affairs and for so long? The citizens of New Orleans.

And so now I can make the connection that has so far been eluding me, but which I think explains my own deep pessimism for the future of New Orleans: The city itself reminds me of nothing more than a famous symbol from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

The great oak tree stood on a hill over the Hudson, in a lonely spot on the Taggart estate. Eddie Willers, aged seven, liked to come and look at the tree. It had stood there for hundreds of years, and he thought it would always stand there. Its roots clutched the hill like a fist with frozen fingers sunk into the soil, and he thought that if a giant were to seize it by the top, he would not be able to uproot it, but would swing the whole of the earth with it, like a ball at the end of a string. He felt safe in the oak tree's presence; it was a thing that nothing could change or threaten; it was his greatest symbol of strength.

On night, lightning struck the oak tree. Eddie saw it the next morning. It lay broken in half, and he looked into its trunk as into the mouth of a black tunnel. The trunk was not only an empty shell; its heart had rotted away long ago; there was nothing inside -- just a thin gray dust that was being dispersed by the whim of the faintest wind. The living power had gone, and the shape it left had not been able to stand without it. (13)

If New Orleans is a great oak, its people must provide it strength. Indications so far are that perhaps too many of its people are weak. This bodes ill for its survival.

And speaking of the people of New Orleans, something that is immediately apparent on television coverage and to anyone who has any familiarity with New Orleans at all is the fact that most of its population is black. The news media have downplayed this so far, but this issue is beginning to crop up. Since it is, it is worthwhile to consider what bearing, if any, race has on the situation in New Orleans.

Blacks have a unique place in America, having endured slavery and persecution. Partly in reaction to this history, and, as Thomas Sowell argues, partly owing to the cultural milieu into which black slaves entered America, blacks also have a unique culture, which presents this people with its own unique challenges.

But Sowell's views on the challenges faced by blacks are not (yet) the conventional wisdom. Just as the Gelinas article pointed out that New Orleans is one of the last "helpless cities" in America, quite a different article , by Jack Shafer, brings up another specter of the past: racism.

When disaster strikes, Americans -- especially journalists -- like to pretend that no matter who gets hit, no matter what race, color, creed, or socioeconomic level they hail from, we're all in it together. This spirit informs the 1997 disaster flick Volcano, in which a "can't we all just get along" moment arrives at the film's end: Volcanic ash covers every face in the big crowd scene, and everybody realizes that we're all members of one united race.

But we aren't one united race, we aren't one united class, and Katrina didn't hit all folks equally. By failing to acknowledge upfront that black New Orleanians -- and perhaps black Mississippians -- suffered more from Katrina than whites, the TV talkers may escape potential accusations that they're racist. But by ignoring race and class, they boot the journalistic opportunity to bring attention to the disenfranchisement of a whole definable segment of the population. What I wouldn't pay to hear a Fox anchor ask, "Say, Bob, why are these African-Americans so poor to begin with?"

What is remarkable about this article is not the question it asks at the end, which is actually a very important question. It is that the article seems to ask this question rhetorically, as evidenced by its author's use of the popular race-baiting term "disenfranchisement". In doing so, he addresses his question to the wrong people, if he is really asking it at all.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I am not so sure that Shafer would be very happy with my own answer to his question. But I do find myself in good company as, much more importantly than a bunch of white guys asking this kind of question on television, many blacks themselves are exploring it. Among them are Thomas Sowell, William Raspberry, other black intellectuals, and even a growing number of black politicians. As William Raspberry, a liberal commentator has put it, of the obstacles faced by blacks in this country:

Maybe we haven't laid racism to rest, but we have reached the point where what we do matters more than what is done to us. That's great, good news. Would somebody write a book about it?

So racism, contrary to what Shafer seems to hint, isn't any longer regarded -- even among liberal blacks -- as the unquestionable cause of the black man's plight. And as to why I think blacks, on the whole, remain behind most other ethnic groups in America (and therefore tended to be the worst off after the storm), I wrote about this when speaking of soul-searching among the Democrats quite some time ago.

The general impression ... that white Southerners have is that the Democratic Party taxes them to buy the votes of blacks, while at the same time making blacks into a government-dependent underclass who have no incentive for self-improvement. This underclass breeds criminals, who are not held accountable for their actions. White Southerners see a vicious circle of crime and dependency perpetuated by the Democrats and paid for at their own expense. Believe it or not, many of us would really like to see blacks succeeding in life. But we wonder how this can happen in general when big government removes the incentive to learn how, runs lousy schools, and permits criminals to infest black neighborhoods [italics added].

In short, I see a society where it is the welfare state, and no longer racism, that represents the biggest external obstacle to the progress of blacks today. Why? Because it reinforces all the worst aspects of black culture described by Thomas Sowell in his recent book, Black Rednecks and White Liberals.

In an article today, Tracinski explicitly identifies this problem with respect to New Orleans and further notes, at the end, its psychological dimension. (This article should be read in full.)

What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.

But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.

The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans [bold added]. And that is the story that no one is reporting.

New Orleans is -- or was -- full of victims of the welfare state, most of them black. If New Orleans is to continue its existence as a vital city, it will "have to dig deep within itself." For many of its poor blacks, this will mean no longer blaming whitey and waiting for government handouts, but instead accepting responsibility for their own lives and becoming their own saviors. It is crunch time for New Orleans, and this means it is crunch time for its black citizenry, if the city is to be reborn to its former glory any time soon.

The oak has taken a direct blow. Will it keep standing? I hope so, but the tree is huge and has to be able to hold itself up.

-- CAV