On Tuesday, August 30, 2005, Hurricane Katrina mercilessly devastated the region the hip hop community refers to as the "Dirty South.” The region includes the states of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi--the three states hit the hardest by this natural disaster. The residents of these areas are being done “dirty” or being cheated, and here are the reasons why.

The lifestyle in New Orleans, Louisiana has undergone a dramatic downgrade ever since Katrina's departure. The rate of violence has increased along with the death rate. Immediately after the disaster occurred the media focused predominantly on “looting.” The rapper Kanye West criticized the media's portrayal of the African American community in contrast to that of the whites living in the same area: “You see a black family, it says, ‘they’re looting.’ You see a white family, it says, ‘They're looking for food.’” Now, if you were living in such dire and unimaginable conditions as the people in New Orleans wouldn’t you also be “looking for food?” According to Merriam Webster’s Dictionary, ‘looting’ means “to rob especially on a large scale and usually by violence or corruption.” When it comes to this so-called looting, was any violence present? No, the only violence that the media covered was the attempted sniper attacks during evacuations and completely inaccurate stories about what happened in the Dome. I do not condone this reckless and unnecessary behavior, but clearly desperation took its toll on the people of New Orleans.

I must now emphasize an aspect of this disaster that is not given enough stress: the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Who are they? They are the poverty-stricken, lower-class, African Americans who had no means by which to evacuate. This is a topic for which the media has avoided serious coverage until Kanye West spoke his mind. Before his statements there had been silence on this important issue. Mr. West broke that silence with an opinion that is still resounding in people's ears today: “George Bush does not care about black people.” Personally, I must say that Kanye took that statement a bit too far. I feel that West's anger and outrage was speaking for him. I wouldn't take it so far as to say that George W. Bush, our incumbent president, is racist, but I will say that when describing him, Mr. West was in the right ballpark.

We all know that this was a natural disaster and could not be prevented. However, it escalated to a catastrophe of enormous proportions when our nation’s ‘leader’ was not there to lead. Did you know that our president was vacationing on a ranch in Texas when the storm hit Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama? We can only hope that the president was not so oblivious to everything that he was not aware that Katrina was on its way. Now, a responsible president--one who embodies leadership and prudence--would have taken it upon himself to cut his vacation short and head to the White House immediately. Instead, our president stayed at his ranch and showed up for duties two whole days AFTER the hurricane struck land.

He is not a leader! Why would you follow him? Of course, he IS ‘working hard’ to get the troops, supplies, and aid there. Mr. Bush, we understand that this is going to be a long process but please stop emphasizing that. Like Aaron Broussard, the president of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana said, referring to the absence of assistance in the affected areas, “For God’s sake, shut up and send us somebody!” Mr. Bush, you should stop making statements about how much money will be used to help the victims of Katrina and discuss instead, why it took so long for the Federal Emergency Management Agency directors to get to the hurricane zone--about three days AFTER Katrina hit. In that time, babies died of dehydration and the elderly perished on account of the absence of medicine and medical attention.

FEMA is a branch of the Department of Homeland Security, which is not independent of the president. In other words, it cannot function on its own. It is only on the president’s orders that it may act. Therefore, due to the president’s absence from the White House, it was not able to act in a prompt manner to the crisis.

In order for FEMA to be a more effective organization it needs, according to Broussard, more congressional funding and more presidential support. He says that FEMA needs to be an “independent agency that will be able to fulfill its mission to work in partnership with state and local governments across America.” In order for FEMA to do what it was created to do, it needs to be free of the bureaucracy which cripples it at present.

Worsening this situation are the president’s cuts in funding for the maintenance of the levees in New Orleans. A leader would never do that. Neither would he provide a financial aid package to another country more rapidly than he would for his own country. A “leader” would instead clean his own backyard before cleaning his neighbor’s backyard. It is rather curious that the president reacted so quickly to the October 8th earthquake that struck Pakistan and India. Nonetheless, as the American people, we should not ask why our president responded so quickly to that disaster but why he did not respond promptly to hurricane Katrina. It may be, however, that he did in fact take action speedily but just not in the areas that experienced the greatest destruction. I have a brother that lives in LaPlace, Louisiana in a relatively affluent neighborhood highly populated by whites. His neighborhood had running water and electricity three days after the hurricane hit. Couldn’t we have provided aid just as quickly to poor non-white neighborhoods that needed the assistance even more than the rich white neighborhoods did? Whether Bush says it or not, whether the media says it or not, whether you like it or not, this disaster comes down to a matter of class.

It may be far-fetched to claim “George Bush does not care about black people,” but the value of life in the Dirty South was de-emphasized and this is evident in the president’s tardy response to this tragedy. This de-emphasis entirely contradicts his policy of "homeland security." He constantly discusses how he must secure the American people from a terrorist threat, from nuclear war, from this and from that. However, homeland security is at the very core of this issue. This is loss of life on American soil. This is exactly what homeland security is supposed to protect against. Bush is a hypocrite because he waited three days, after many people died unnecessarily, before he called this a ‘national tragedy.’

This disaster was your time to act, Mr. President, and you did so in an extremely inappropriate fashion because you were too busy vacationing. You were in your fancy ranch as hundreds of corpses were floating on the rising waters. You were watching the news as the residents of these three states did not have electricity. You were getting fed by your servants while impoverished citizens had to ‘loot’ stores in order to survive. It took you an S.O.S. from New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and a lachrymal message of distress from Aaron Broussard, the President of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana for you to finally respond to this ‘national tragedy.’ These poor African Americans had no means to escape the wrath of Hurricane Katrina, and you knew that very well but overlooked it. There are no excuses for your behavior. You should be ashamed of your actions, what you stand for, and most importantly of yourself because we definitely are and forever will be.