A new article by Yoji Cole for
DiversityInc magazine reveals that FEMA is an organization plagued by racial inequities, which "makes clear the reasons for its inability to relate to and provide for people of color, especially low-income blacks."
As if its incompetence weren't enough, FEMA's lack of diversity and growing discrimination complaints help us to better understand yet another key reason for its appallingly slow and indifferent response to Hurricane Katrina, particularly in New Orleans. Jump down for more.
The DiversityInc article reveals that of FEMA's 19 senior staff members listed on its website, only one is a person of color: Pauline C. Campbell, an African American woman who is the director of FEMA's Office of Civil Rights. FEMA also told the magazine that all 10 of its regional directors are white (FEMA has not yet complied with the magazine's FOIA request for the racial/ethnic demographics of its entire staff of 2,000 employees).
On top of the near-total lack of diversity in its leadership ranks, FEMA has also seen discrimination complaints soar in the agency in recent years. DiversityInc reports that in the first three quarters of FY2005, FEMA had more internal complaints based on race and sex than it had in 2003 and 2004 combined, and more than it had in any year since 2000. The first three quarters of 2005 saw race-based complaints more than double, from 12 in 2004 to 31 in 2005, according to the article.
The article offers several examples to illustrate how FEMA's lack of diversity and increasingly intolerant work environment played out in its response to Hurricane Katrina:
- In the early days of the recovery, gunshots were said to have stopped rescue and evacuation efforts. The perception was one of a city spiraling out of control as gangs of angry black people gathered unchecked. FEMA lacked leaders of color who could speak out against such perceptions. (New reports about what actually happened at the New Orleans convention center, for example, show how this perception clouded what was actually happening on the ground: the vast majority of people at the convention center were not being violent, they were suffering.)
- There is no indication that FEMA leaders thought that keeping black families together was important, since many have been separated at shelters in different states, and even today only a skeleton staff is working to reunite families. FEMA lacked the leaders of color who could speak out against this action and point out that separating black families echoed slave-era atrocities, when African American families were routinely ripped apart.
- Another perception is that there was no need to provide exceptional relief for poor black citizens, since they already had nothing. This perception was expressed by Barbara Bush in her now-infamous statement: "So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this - this is working very well for them." FEMA lacked a leader of color who could emphatically tell the media and the public that the agency and the government did not share Mrs. Bush's point of view.
This article brings up many crucial points that must be addressed by our nation if we are to fully understand all aspects of what went wrong with the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately, that is not going to happen with the current whitewash investigations being done by the White House and Congress, and it may not even be addressed by an independent commission - unless we continue to raise the issue and demand that it be addressed.
Unfortunately, the full article is password-protected. But you can sign up for a free seven-day trial and access the article and all the other great content from this excellent magazine. (And in a little plug, DiversityInc is an excellent magazine that is well worth the subscription price.)