Katrina aftermath: Faith, Politics, and Culture

Katrina and the uncomfortable truth
by Richard E. Stearns

Perhaps the most disturbing comment I have heard over the past few weeks, as I have been glued to the 24/7 Katrina media coverage, came from a man who lost his home in New Orleans and was living in a shelter. It came in response to the controversial use of the word "refugee" to describe the thousands of people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. He said: "'Refugee?' I'm not some poor African with flies on his face - we are not refugees, we're American citizens!"

There is a profound and uncomfortable truth captured in this man's angry statement. The truth that all men are not created equal; that the 2.8 billion poor who live on less than $2 a day are not valued with equal importance; that their suffering is less important; that their pain can be tolerated; that their lives are somehow less significant; and that they don't have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the same way the rest of us do.

Hurricane Katrina exposed this uncomfortable double standard to us. It is a double standard that suggests that we don't have a moral responsibility to respond to human suffering if it occurs in a different hemisphere and it is a double standard that showed us that the poor - even in America - are the most vulnerable of our citizens.

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