Katrina: One Year Later...

Hmmm....
Well, it's 9:26 pm on August 29,2006
One year after the Hurricane Katrina disaster
I've been watching specials over the last few days
Forcing myself to remember
And yet, a year later, I still have so few words
Just fragments of ideas that sputter to the surface
How does one understand this as an act of nature?
...As a Christian?
...As an American?
...As a Black woman?
...As a decendant of Southerners/Mississipians?

So what come up
People that keep saying that "this doesn't happen in America"?
"How could this have happened in America?"
The continued references to New Orleans looking like a war zone
For me, I hold the Katrina Disaster constant with the war in Iraq
Because they are interconnected, intertwined in my mind
It just seems to me that the Gulf Coast can't be rebuilt while we fight this second Middle Eastern Gulf war
Our government and our resources have made solid commitment to that Gulf rather than our own Mississippi and Louisiana Gulf

I think my deepest fear is that Yes, the storm revealed the race-class problem in America
But I fear it will become yet another instance of Black folk as continued spectacle in the American media.
Images of Katrina reinforce Black fragility in America and reflect an America that is enamored with Black pain