N'awlins

New Orleans, Louisiana is a great example for potential and past environmental racism. New Orleans is often hit by hurricanes and therefore has set evacuation plans in case a hurricane hits. Transportation is considered a necessity in evacuation, however 24% of African American families in the United States do not have cars versus a mere 7% of white families. In the south where 54% of African Americans in the United States live, it seems an unfair standard to create an evacuation plan that requires a car. This is environmental racism because the evacuation plan assumes everyone has a car when this is clearly not the case. The majority of those people who do not have cars are African American, Latino American, or Asian American. In 1997, there was a strong effort to relieve this policy of its unfairness towards minorities. The Federal Emergency Management Agency created Project Impact, which provided funding for communities to satisfy their need for better evacuation plans. This policy was ended by the Bush administration in 2001, causing the problem to reemerge.

In 2005, when these evacuation plans were needed in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina, most people without cars were unable to evacuate. Since one third of African Americans living in New Orleans did not have cars, they were much less likely to evacuate than whites. According to James Elliott, African Americans were 1.5 times more likely to remain in the city of New Orleans during hurricane Katrina than whites. In addition, New Orleans did not have enough buses or bus drivers to successfully evacuate the population without cars. This exposed major weaknesses in evacuation and especially shined a spotlight on environmental racism in the south.

I personally have many family members in the south of Louisiana, spanning from Lafayette to New Orleans. Whenever I drive down to visit my aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandma, I always notice the evacuation route signs and think to myself: "Wow, these were really well planned. All the major throughways are utilized and a lot of planning must have been used to pick out the best routes." Not once have I thought, "what about all the people without cars?" There is a 20-something mile bridge that spans the Atchafalaya River Basin along I-10. Without a car, there really is no other way to get across. but I had never thought about this. Because of my background, I had never thought to put myself in the shoes of a family without a car in the event of a hurricane. In addition, my family in New Orleans lived in the areas above sea level, so I never really had to worry about them during Katrina. Nonetheless, improvements have been made in order to avoid the aftermath of Katrina. More preemptive actions have been taken in subsequent hurricane seasons and more emphasis has been placed on finding transportation for those in need. However, the true test isn't until another hurricane hits the region.

-Dustin