New Orleans: The Face of Poverty in America

The most striking fact about New Orleans is that despite its relative tourism-generated affluence, it is home to some of the Unitied State’s most extreme poverty. The yawning gap between the rich and the poor was brought to world attention in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

In 2003, for example, the number of families living in poverty in Louisiana was about 181,000. Nearly 30 percent of people younger than 18 in Louisiana live in poverty, while almost 15 percent of its citizens 65 and older also are below the poverty line. Those figures are close to double the national averages.

According to a recent article by Earl Ofari Hutchinson, "Looting New Orleans, and America's Poverty Crisis", the deplorable looting in New Orleans is a symptom of longstanding American poverty. Hutchinson writes:

Criminal gangs, which always take advantage of chaos and misery to grab whatever they can, did much of the looting. But many desperately poor, mostly black residents saw a chance to grab items that they can't afford. That's still wrong, unless the items were necessary for survival. But it's no surprise. New Orleans has one of the highest poverty rates of any of America's big cities.

According to a report by Total Community Action, a New Orleans public advocacy group, nearly one in three of New Orleans' 485,000 residents live below the poverty level. The majority of that group is black. A spokesperson for the United Negro College Fund noted that the city's poor live in some of the most dilapidated housing in the nation.
http://www.blacknews.com/pr/looting101.html