Post World War II and Katrina: Inequality and Diversity in New Orleans
- Lauren Fryman
- Oct 19, 2017
- 4 min read
New Orleans, like other cities across the nation, went through various processes following World War II that resulted in inequality and changes in diversity. New Orleans also experienced similar changes involving inequality and diversity following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans has long struggled with poverty, and this was a major factor in how Hurricane Katrina’s effects were so long-lasting and more evident in certain areas of the city - in fact, these areas have still yet to recover from Katrina.
The post-World War II metropolis, with New Orleans being no exception, saw a rise in institutional ghettos. Institutional ghettos were highly segregated neighborhoods with a social organization similar to that of the larger society as a whole. The emergence of white flight to the suburbs, for instance, Metairie, during this time gave major rise to these institutional ghettos. Institutional ghettos were replaced by jobless ghettos in the early 1990s and are still a problem in New Orleans and other cities around the nation today. Jobless ghettos, a term defined by William Julius Wilson, were “places where, on an average day, fewer than half of the working-age adults are actually working.” (Chen, Orum, & Paulsen, 2013, p. 207) The informal economy is another process still visible in American cities today, including New Orleans. The informal economy is defined as “economic activity that is not officially recorded, regulated, or taxed.” (Chen, Orum, & Paulsen, 2013, p. 207)
Economic inequality directly affects many facets of our social lives as residents. It has been suggested that economic inequality has some direct correlation between mental illness, violence, prison population, high school dropout rates and more. According to social epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson, “What we’re looking at is general social dysfunction related to inequality. It’s not just one or two things that go wrong, its most things.” (TED, 2011)
Mental illness is an example of a social concern that has been greatly affected by economic inequality. Deinstitutionalization, defined as “a shift from large, formal, state-run mental health facilities to smaller, less-formal, community-based facilities” (Chen, Orum, and Paulsen, pg. 210), began in the 1960s and had a profound effect on the mentally ill population as funding for these services were inadequate and in many cases, non-existent. This problem persisted in New Orleans to an even higher degree following Hurricane Katrina due to the closing of Charity Hospital, leaving many facing mental health issues without proper care. Wilkinson specifically refers to how mental illness and income inequality are related:
WHO puts together figures using the same diagnostic interviews on random samples of the population to allow us to compare rates of mental illness in each society. This is the percent of the population with any mental illness in the preceding year, and it goes from about eight percent up to three times that – whole societies with three times the level of mental illness of others. And again, closely related to inequality. (TED, 2011)
Race is also an important subject to discuss when referring to social and economic inequality within the city. Racial inequality was obviously a major issue following World War II; unfortunately, this has not seemed to change much following recovery efforts of Hurricane Katrina. In a study done in 2013, New Orleans ranked second on economic inequality in the United States, falling only behind Atlanta. The video New Orleans after Katrina makes some extremely important points when discussing this inequality concerning the recovery of the city following Hurricane Katrina:
(The) pre-Katrina population number of African Americans has plunged by nearly a hundred thousand since the storm according to the Urban League. The income gap between black and white residents has increased by 37 percent since 2005. In 2013, the median income for African American households in New Orleans was $25,000 compared to over $60,000 for white households… It’s important to recognize who was left behind 10 years ago because in fact the same people have been left behind in the 10 years of the recovery. There has been a recovery of New Orleans, it has just been some parts of the city and some people in the city who have recovered. (Democracy Now, 2015)
While gentrification has led to many parts of the city recovering “better than ever” and the tourism of areas such as the French Quarter and Uptown have brought in income to these parts of the city, an overwhelming remainder of the population is still facing significant challenges yet to be satisfactorily addressed. In these ways, New Orleans is a perfect example of how economic inequality and diversity affects cities and various populations, with wealthier residents benefiting as the poor suffer through displacement and/or lack of funding for social services and infrastructure.
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