Katrina and her Gendering of Class and Race

Katrina and her Gendering of Class and Race: "It is almost too difficult to write these thoughts at this moment without a kind of distance on the incredible sadness and destruction…and without more information. Yet…

Hurricanes are now named for men and women in the superficial attempt at gender neutrality-as though this actually could make a difference in men and women's lives in terms of equal treatment. This alteration in nomenclature conceals the real inequities in women's lives. This was truer than ever when Katrina hit with all 'her' powerful, destructive, unpredictable, foreboding force. 'She' devastated hundreds of thousands of people's lives and there was/is no mention of the particular and disproportionate numbers of women who bore/bare the brunt of 'her' fury. This fury hit blacks and poor people hard but it hit black poor women even harder. If usual numbers hold true here, poor black women make up the greatest numbers of people living below sea level without cars.

In the aftermath everyone mentions how the awful reality of racism and class has reared its ugly head, but there is no mention of gender. Why do we name race and class and not also gender as an unfair structure of power when women of color are the poorest of the poor in this country, and in Louisiana and Mississippi. Our T.V. screens were/are filled with the faces of black women, but they are/were described simply by their race and class. The victims were too readily called refugees and I assume the fact that most of the world's refugees are women and children played a part-as much as race and class-in this 'othered' choice of terms."