Crisis in Black and White: The Construction of Racialized Realities Following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005, causing catastrophic levels of environmental, structural and economic damage in addition to a still-unknown number of human injuries and death. Less than one month later, Hurricane Rita threatened to strike the same region with greater intensity. In this paper, we argue that race is a deeply entrenched, socially-constructed institution in U.S. society that informed and shaped at least two separate realities in the Gulf Coast following these hurricanes. For whites, there were dangerous black men looting stores, marauding in the streets and raping young women. While white respondents experienced what they felt was differential behavior on the part of black survivors, they did not feel that the rescue, response and relief efforts were racially biased. For blacks, race was and is a factor in the authorities' efforts. Specifically, blacks felt that the predominantly white authority criminalized black survivors.This paper first discusses the dominant theories guiding the analysis, the Social Construction of Reality, and Critical Race Theory. Then, the paper addresses the ways in which ethnographic methods were used to gather data in four cities of the Gulf Coast. Finally, the paper analyzes how race informed the people affected by the hurricanes so that two separate realities emerged. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]