Katrina Forges New Consensus on Poverty

Hurricane Katrina has forged a strong consensus among America’s major racial and ethnic groups to eliminate poverty in America, according to a new multilingual poll. The storm and its aftermath also shook public confidence in the U.S. government’s capacity to handle catastrophes, including a terrorist attack.

These are among the major findings of a national survey of 1035 Hispanics, Asians, African Americans and non-Hispanic whites on Katrina’s impact. The poll was conducted in six languages by Sergio Bendixen for New California Media.

Clear majorities of Asians, Hispanics, African Americans and whites believe that fighting poverty is now more important than fighting terrorism or establishing democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan, the poll found.

“This is the first time in decades that I have seen poverty make it to the top of the agenda for the U.S. public,” Bendixen notes. “The dramatic images of the families abandoned at the Superdome and on I-10 brought home just how tough it is to be poor in America.”

When asked what option they favored for repairing Katrina’s damage, a majority of all four groups chose “getting US troops out of Iraq as fast as possible”.

Like the consensus on poverty, a majority of Hispanics, Asians and African Americans and a plurality of whites also agreed that climate change and weak environmental policies were likely to cause future natural disasters.

All four groups were united in their view that Katrina has eroded trust in the U.S. government’s capacity to handle natural disasters, let alone protect Americans from a terrorist attack. Significant percentages of immigrants from Asia and Latin America believe their country of birth could have done a better job in responding to a similar disaster.

The one issue on which America’s major ethnic and racial groups disagreed was the role of racism in the Katrina catastrophe. Most African Americans blamed racial discrimination but a majority of whites said it was not a factor. Hispanics and Asians were evenly divided.

“All Americans witnessed Katrina and we wanted to know what they thought across the racial and ethnic spectrum,” says Sandy Close, executive director of New California Media. “What we found was a remarkable unanimity on issues of poverty, government incompetence and climate change. The question now is whether the leadership exists to act on this consensus.”

PNN