Hurricane Katrina as Anti-Black Genocide

• In Event: 378 - Open Refereed Roundtable Session II
  In Refereed Roundtable: Open Refereed Roundtable. B. Table. 01. Race and Place

Abstract

Hurricane Katrina is well established as a human-made disaster that highlights the persistence of the racial state in New Orleans and in U.S. society more broadly. A focus on the genocidal nature of Katrina, however, highlights the physical and cultural erasure of the target group and the longer term loss both for the target group itself and for broader society. This paper contributes to the literature through the synthesis and application of theories of the racial state and racial genocide to Hurricane Katrina, which has been touched upon but not thoroughly explored in the scholarly literature. Further, this paper contributes to the genocide literature by highlighting how the outcomes of “natural” disasters may be a part of larger genocidal system. Using existing empirical studies on the causes and outcomes of Hurricane Katrina, I find that Katrina fits multiple facets of Churchill’s definition of genocide, including killing, evisceration, displacement, and social death, particularly in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward.

Author

• Ian Breckenridge-Jackson, University of California-Riverside