State of the Union Address 07

The omission of New Orleans from the State of the Union address strikes me as emblematic of the whole baffling mess. We have lost a great American city and our collective consciousness seems to be OK with that.

I’m not so much getting into partisan politics here. Instead, I’m wondering what it is about all of us that accepts how we can talk about the state of our nation, without recommitting to the protection of the lives and communities that have experienced so much loss.

In the New Orleans recovery, progress is slow, processes are broken and money is not flowing at nearly the pace of what is needed. All those problems can be solved, in large part, by keeping public focus on the direness of the situation. Calling attention to our most urgent challenges is the true purpose of the State of the Union.

It is difficult not to conclude that the reason that we allow the New Orleans crisis to go unmentioned is because of race and economic class. We can talk about donor fatigue or the media’s short attention span or the war in Iraq. I don’t buy it. We have too long a record in American society of bigotry not to face up to a dirty, persistent truth about our subconscious view of New Orleans. We talked about it openly in the wake of the disaster. But now we return to ambivalence, at best, over what to do there, for the same, shameful reason.

It rises above (or should I say, sinks below?) partisan politics. While every current presidential prospect of either party speaks of restoring confidence among Americans, few have decided to keep the drumbeat going for New Orleans. How better to reassure Americans of their families’ security and future, than to take care of those who have already lost hope for both?