Panel asks for equality in relief

Penn professors who attended a dialogue on racial issues and Hurricane Katrina hope that America will take a lesson from past disasters and ensure that blacks are equally cared for in New Orleans and in the future.

"It's been a long time since you could bring up problems of race," Director of the Penn Africana Studies Center Tufuku Zuberi said.

He, along with School of Social Policy and Practice professors Damon Freeman and Carol Spigner, spoke yesterday to an audience of about 30 people in order to combat a lack of support for poor blacks in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The panel began with Freeman giving attendees background on large-scale government programs to aid those below the poverty line after crises.

He used relief efforts during the Great Depression as examples.

Freeman said that those programs, created by President Franklin Roosevelt, left out poor blacks. Pointing to a small Alabama town in the 1930s, Freeman said that the federal government helped to build community facilities, but that because of segregation, blacks were unable to use them.

He warned that with Katrina relief, "we will doom ourselves with past mistakes. ... We need to carefully consider the historical context."

Spigner followed with an analysis of the Medicaid program, which provides health care for poor Americans. She said that many states do not have the money to provide health care to Katrina victims -- many of whom are poor blacks -- and some lawmakers have proposed cutting other federal social programs to compensate.

"Even when there's a crisis, the politics and dollars ... slow the recovery process," she said.

Zuberi spoke last, focusing his remarks on his dismay with media coverage in the days immediately following Katrina's landfall.

He was disappointed that media outlets failed to continue coverage of the racial implications of the disaster.

"Will what we saw allow us to remove the blinders from our eyes and see [poverty and segregation] everywhere else?" Zuberi asked.

After the talk, many attendees remained to speak with the panelists.

"I feel like its an important thing to talk about," said College junior Sophia Aladenoye, vice president of the Black Student League.

Co-organizer Smita Pendharkar, a graduate student in the School of Social Policy and Practice, had expected more attendees but "was pleased with ... how engaged the audience was."

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