Bigger and badder natural disasters do more than just expose the devastating effects of climate change — they also serve to shine light on the extensive economic and racial inequalities omnipresent in the United States today.
Not everyone experiences a hurricane the same way. Certainly, everyone suffers, and that’s worth noting. But some suffer much more than others — and it has a lot to do with how much money you make.
First things first, let’s take a look at evacuation. Suppose you live in Texas or Florida or Louisiana — and your state’s going to get hit with a hurricane over the weekend. If the hurricane is severe enough, a lot of high-level officials are going to tell you to evacuate, to prioritize your life over any material good that you own.
Getting out of the way seems like a very smart thing to do, but the cold, hard reality is that it’s just not feasible for some people. You’re going to need certain things to leave — a plane ticket or car, gas money and either a hotel room or family to stay with. An overwhelming majority of people don’t have access to those things and choose instead to stay put. They’re not not-afraid of the hurricane, nor do they care more about their house than they do their lives, nor are they stupid. They simply have no other choice.
So, you stay home. But what about your house? Is it equipped to handle a flood or heavy winds? Do you have insurance in case it isn’t? Well, if you live in a lower-income community, and don’t make a lot of money, your house probably isn’t very sturdy. There’s also a high chance that you live on undesirable land, more prone to flooding, fires and other natural disasters. Remember the Grenfell Tower fire in London? The Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York City? Low-income communities during Hurricane Katrina? The fact of the matter is that the cheaper a place is to rent or own, the more dangerous it is to live or work or function there. One poorer area of Houston, according to Texas Southern University professor Robert Bullard, has ditches and only ditches to deal with flooding. Not storm drains, levies, or pipes — ditches — like we’re living in the 19th century.
These lower-income communities tend to be communities of color, and so people of color more often than not experience a hurricane more devastatingly than white people. But even something as simple as not knowing English can put you at a severe disadvantage. If I don’t speak English, for example, how am I going to call for help? Even worse, what if I’m undocumented? How am I supposed to evacuate if, in Texas especially, they might be checking for papers at the border, despite the border not being an international one. Should I even bother going to a shelter if my papers might be checked?
None of this factors in what it takes to rebuild after a storm, either. Economic and racial disparities during the after-storm period, according to an article published by Think Progress, become even more exaggerated than during the storm itself. As mentioned earlier, low-income Americans don’t tend to have flood insurance. Instead, they are forced to rely on nonprofits and government aid, rather than personal funds to rebuild. And sometimes the former withholds money (i.e. Red Cross and the Haitian earthquake in 2010) and the latter is slow to deliver. Lower-income Americans spend more time in shelters and more time rebuilding, on average, than their wealthy counterparts.
So what exactly do we do about all of this? It’s all too easy to just donate a couple dollars and forget. We ought to invest in preventative infrastructure plans in lower-income communities to protect against flooding, winds and fires. We ought to stop associating hurricane relief with the coming of a big, intrusive government — and instead with what is simply moral and smart. The hurricane was not the fault of these communities, it was the fault of climate change — the driving mechanism for the severity and frequency of recent natural disasters — so why punish them?
Frankly, it’s un-American, and antithetical to the notion that all have the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. What life, what liberty and what happiness am I realizing in a shelter, with nothing but the clothes on my back and without a roof over my head or a job to go to? What life, what liberty and what happiness am I realizing as my wealthy compatriots evacuate inbound, while I sit in my attic waiting for the storm to pass? What life, what liberty and what happiness am I realizing when my government digs a ditch for me, and builds sophisticated flood-controls for the gated community on the other side of town? None at all.
