While millions of Floridians were without power in the hurricane-hit Sunshine State, racial justice activists were weathering the weakened tropical storm by making the perilous time all about "environmental racism."
Hurricane Ian was projected to leave "historic" widespread devastation and set record flooding as residents everywhere were confined inside damaged homes relentlessly battered by catastrophic wind and rain. But as the natural disaster wreaked repeated havoc, the race-obsessed Left threw the race card to the wind.
CLAIM: An article by NewsOne, a digital outlet that touts itself as "Black America’s #1 News Source," claims that there is "an extra element of fear for Black folks during hurricane season." The story published at the time of Hurricane Ian's destructive landfall is titled "Hurricanes 'Disproportionately' Harm Black Neighborhoods–It's Because Of Environmental Racism." Its subheading attempts to remind readers: "As Hurricane Ian touches down in Florida, remember who suffers the most. The destruction from hurricanes is never equally distributed."
#HurricaneIan: As Hurricane Ian reaches Florida, remember who suffers the most. The destruction from hurricanes is never equally distributed.https://t.co/3ytnm6vOgb
— NewsOne (@newsone) September 28, 2022
"Even though hurricanes don't specifically target Black communities, their lasting impact always seems to affect Black people the most," argues Wednesday's piece written by NewsOne senior editor Bilal Morris, an Atlanta-based writer who extensively covers "Black folklore" and race. (Morris often tweets about being black, rage-tweets against "white privilege," and has accused anti-critical race theory advocates of being "racists.")
It's a notion that Vice President Kamala Harris shared when claiming late last week that aid doled out to Hurricane Ian victims should be prioritized "based on equity" and directed to "communities of color" first. In her commitment to ending "racist" hurricane relief, Harris is determined to facilitate an "equitable" response to Ian with preferential identity-based treatment from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
You can’t make this up.
— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) September 30, 2022
Kamala Harris said the administration will be giving hurricane resources “based on equity” by directing funds to “communities of color.”
I guess everyone else is just screwed. ??????? pic.twitter.com/75y4JfoYD7
Morris goes on a tangential rant about "environmental oppression" dating back to "America's racist redlining practices" and how the Great Depression led to housing practices that allowed banks and insurance companies to "color-code residential maps of US cities, distinguishing neighborhoods largely based on race."
"Black neighborhoods were color-coded 'red' and deemed hazardous or low value. This also allowed banks to control where Black families lived in cities throughout the country by only allowing them mortgages in 'redlined' areas, many of which are still predominately Black and still largely ignored when it comes to infrastructure."
In his NewsOne article, Morris invokes costly storms in U.S. history such as Hurricane Harvey, which flooded Texas in 2017, pointing to how the southwest Houston neighborhood that suffered the worst flood damage was 49% non-white. Then he cites Hurricane Katrina from 2005 and how the deadly Category 5 Atlantic hurricane had laid waste to southeast Louisiana where "African American neighborhoods suffered the most damage."
Morris sources E&E News, an energy and environmental policy site owned by Politico, which reports that four of the seven ZIP codes that suffered the costliest flood damage from Katrina were at least 75% black.
"As climate change intensifies, so will hurricanes which leaves minorities and low-income residents more vulnerable," Morris writes, noting how working-class populations do not have the resources to sustain themselves in the wake of crises and many don't have the opportunity to flee to safer ground in the meantime. That particular demographic also doesn't have the income flexibility to rebuild post-storm, Morris explains.
FACTS: Harvey was characterized as an "equal opportunity" hurricane with much different "racial optics" than Katrina had, according to the Associated Press. The charges of racism that swirled after Katrina didn't surface in racially diverse Houston, where blacks and whites each accounted for about a quarter of the population.
Since there was no mandatory evacuation, Texans of all races and classes remained in the storm's path. George Washington University sociologist Gregory Squires told Associated Press, "Nobody is saying that Donald Trump doesn't like black people," which was an accusation leveled against President George W. Bush over the federal government's slow response to Katrina trapping hundreds of black Americans in buildings and on highways. Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley agreed: Harvey's impact was "universal" in Houston.
One resident, who sheltered at Houston's convention center for almost a full week, told the Associated Press that when it came to how Harvey affected the community, "Nobody is talking about race. It's just, 'What do you need?'" Another on-the-ground source concurred: "Here in Houston, it's everybody. We're getting housing, people are getting food, people are getting material they need for their houses. They rescued everybody, they weren't rescuing white people first or black people first, at least that's what they show on the news."
According to the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston's survey comparing respondents in the Greater Houston area who were affected by Harvey with those not affected (broken down by race and ethnicity), the damage was not discriminatory. Hispanics were reported as the highest percentage at 64.4%, closely followed by Asians at 58%, black respondents at 57.3%, and white respondents trailed at 50.5%.
The multi-year study also found that "a majority of people in each income bracket had been affected by Hurricane Harvey." Over three-fifths of affected respondents had household incomes between $60,000 and $89,999 (61%). Respondents in the lowest income group—those who had a household income of less than $30,000—held the lowest percentage affected by Hurricane Harvey among all four income groups (56.6%).
As for Hurricane Katrina fatalities, most of the victims were old or lived near levee breaches, per a 2009 study published in the scientific journal Risk Assessment. "Neither race nor gender made anyone more likely to die, only a failure to evacuate and a location near a levee breach," says a NOLA.com article reporting on the study.
According to 2008 research identifying Katrina-related deaths in Louisiana and among evacuees in other states, 49% of victims were aged 75 and older. While black victims accounted for 51% of the fatalities and 42% were white, the overall proportions of deaths among non-Hispanic blacks and whites in the most affected parishes "were remarkably consistent with their pre-Katrina race/ethnicity distributions from the 2000 US Census."
Elderly citizens were taken by surprise and unable to prepare themselves for the rushing waters. It's a tragic scene that plays itself over again as large hurricanes return to ravage the Gulf Coast. Emergency preparedness experts and public safety officials say that the data reinforces the dire need for improvement in the government's evacuation apparatus when it comes to the frailest and often hardest-to-move residents.
Looking at Hurricane Sandy, the deadliest, most destructive, and strongest hurricane of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season, white victims (53.8%) far outnumbered black fatalities (12.8%) among the associated deaths from late October to November across Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. (25.6% were of unknown race.) The death toll was listed in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's 2013 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which provided a snapshot of the loss of life.
According to the 2020 E&E News analysis that Morris references, the article indicates that the risk of concentrated flood damage in metro areas is due to urban development creating "more impervious surfaces" in major U.S. cities as well as aging municipal sewer systems that are overwhelmed by excess water.
Associated Press mentions that the narrative at the time surrounding Katrina was "urban neglect," meaning years of disinvestment in infrastructure that results in metropolitan decay, as opposed to Harvey, an example of when "urban sprawl"—the uncontrolled expansion of urban development—compounds a natural disaster.
RATING: The claim that hurricanes "disproportionately" harm black neighborhoods "because of environmental racism" is FALSE and a faulty generalization. Large numbers of victims of other races were found in the floodplains, too, and the casualties seem reflective of the affected population's demographic makeup. Regardless, it's a nuanced subject. Misattributing everything to racism ignores factors such as socioeconomic differences, the ever-ineffectiveness of government at the federal and local level, and archaic infrastructure.