How did the federal and local response to Hurricane Katrina reflect the growing social and racial inequality that became more common during the first two decades of the 2000s?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The ideal answer should include:
- Government response: The Bush administration was ill prepared to deal with the storm's devastation, which proved to be a political catastrophe; the news media realized before federal officials that after the canal levees failed and New Orleans flooded, the city with a nearly 80 percent poverty rate and two-thirds of its citizens nonwhite could not withstand the effects of this disaster
- Issues of poverty and race: many residents could not seek refuge in the Superdome football arena because they did not have cars to get there; white residents fled the city in their cars while African Americans were left stranded on rooftops waiting for rescue; African Americans who tried to flee rising flood waters by entering the mainly white neighborhood on the opposite side of the Danziger Bridge were prevented from doing so by police wielding assault rifles, resulting in the shooting of six refugees that included two deaths
- The racial dimensions to the responses toward African American victims and survivors added fuel to the growing environmental justice movement