Home truths in America - General - In Depth - theage.com.au

Home truths in America - General - In Depth - theage.com.au: "September 11 brought the United States together, at least for a time. Four years on, Hurricane Katrina has exposed its divisions, writes Michael Gawenda. But at least the country is finally talking about its real problems — race and poverty.

ON THE fourth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, there is great sadness and pessimism in America.

Images of death, suffering, abandonment and lawlessness abound. The unanswered cries for help and deliverance from the victims of hurricane Katrina are replayed over and over again on television screens — just as the images of the aircraft smashing into the twin towers in New York were endlessly replayed. The sight of armed gangs looting shops and department stores, shooting at rescuers and police and even at those trying to flee the catastrophe is chilling and familiar, the gun having long been a staple of the imaginings of American popular culture."...

"In the main, the dead, the suffering, the displaced, the abandoned and the shooters and looters are black and poor. They are the descendants of slaves excluded by the original framers of the American Constitution from their dream of a republic in which all men were created equal and had the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

For the first time in a long time, the brutal and shaming facts of poverty and race in America are being discussed. The fact that in Washington, one of the nation's most segregated cities, the infant mortality rate is twice as high as in Beijing. The fact that the US ranks 43rd in the world in infant mortality. The fact that 29 per cent of children are not covered by health insurance and that the US sits 84th in the world for measles immunisation."

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