The response surrounding Hurricane Katrina further
asserts Arendt and Melville’s notions of willful ignorance. Despite the history
of poverty in New Orleans many people were struck by the poverty seen there. This
shock can only come from a position of power and privilege. Many people around
the country have the option to ignore poverty, similar to Captain Delano
ignoring slavery. This option is only given to those within a position of
privilege.
Taken From:youtube
In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck land in Louisiana and proved to be one of the deadliest hurricanes in US history. The severe poverty in Louisiana only made the Hurricane worse as the high tides and winds destroyed several homes and infrastructures as well as taking the lives of over one thousand people.[1] In examining the effects of hurricane Katrina the concept of willful ignorance is clearly present. The poor and homeless are swept out of sight in society and it takes a disaster to shed light on this problem. Hurricane Katrina’s failures in policy and social justice initiatives to ameliorate poverty represent a willful ignorance on behalf of the United States. This ignorance created injustice as described by Locke by causing many to lose their lives as well as their property.
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| Taken from: Quote Addicts |
In Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report of the
Banality of Evil Arendt discusses the difference between accountability and
responsibility. This distinction is clear in looking at the aftermath of
hurricane Katrina. The Final Report of the Select Bipartisan Committee to investigate
the preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina states, “It remains
difficult to understand how government could respond so ineffectively to a
disaster that was anticipated for years, and for which specific dire warnings
had been issues for days. The crisis was not only predictable, it was
predicted.”[2] Government
officials received plenty of warning prior to the hurricane and were aware that
the levees needed to be repaired yet no one took action. The location of New
Orleans below-sea level made it especially vulnerable; furthermore the levees
were not adequate and the population of Louisiana was not evacuated soon enough
despite warnings.[3] The blame is often placed on the environment and government officials. While policy
is to blame for many of these failures, as Arendt points out through the
Holocaust, many others were responsible for this human disaster.
Willful ignorance allowed many to
ignore the poverty that was occurring in New Orleans prior to Hurricane
Katrina. In Come Hell or High Water:
Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster, Michael Dyson states, “Our
being surprised, and disgusted, by the poverty that Katrina revealed is a way
of remaining deliberately naïve about the poor while dodging the responsibility
that knowledge of their lives would entail. We remain blissfully ignorant of
their circumstances to avoid the brutal indictment of our consciences.”[4] Dyson is arguing that in only looking at the issues of poverty during disasters
it allows us to remain willfully ignorant of everyday poverty. Katrina allowed
us to feel comfortable in acknowledging poverty and helping when disaster
strikes while ignoring it every other day. The “surprise and disgust” felt in
seeing the gut-wrenching images of Katrina survivors in the media allows for
people to place the blame on nature rather than human error. However, the issue
in Katrina, as with the Holocaust for Arendt, lies largely with policy and
human error rather than on nature. The poverty in New Orleans was far from a
new concept. Despite this historical poverty, those in positions of power were
able to ignore these far-reaching problems to assert that the destruction was
unpredictable.
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| Taken From: US News [figure 2.0] |
In his speech following the Hurricane, George W. Bush stated “In the aftermath, we have seen fellow
citizens left stunned and uprooted, searching for loved ones, and grieving for
the dead and looking for meaning in a tragedy that seems so blind and random.”[5] Bush also stated, according to Dyson, “I don’t think anyone anticipated the
breach of the levees”.[6] Both of these statements require a denial of the long history of poverty and
disinvestment in New Orleans. In 2001 various articles predicted that a
disastrous hurricane was going to hit New Orleans and that the coastal area
development would lead to over a hundred thousand deaths.[7] Furthermore, Dyson states, “Bush’s ignorance of the precarious state of levees
in New Orleans is ironic since his administration was responsible for severe
budget cuts in the Army Corps of Engineers programs that may have literally
stemmed the tides of Katrina”.[8] Bush ignored the warnings that a hurricane was imminent and even went as far as
to divert funding away from repairing the levees. Bush asserting that this
hurricane was unanticipated or blind is willful ignorance. Bush received a lot of criticism for the above picture (figure 2.0) because it reflects him looking down on New Orleans from a position of privilege and comfort due to the barrier of the airplane from the disaster site. While Bush is able
to ignore the possibility that a hurricane can come and consume hundreds of
lives, many in New Orleans were not afforded that same comfort.
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| Taken from: CNN |
Arendt describes the Nuremberg trials and Eichmann's trial as trying to place blame to make those indirectly responsible feel better
about their role in the Holocaust. Similarly, the Select Bipartisan Committee
to investigate the preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina attempted
to place blame on those directly responsible for Hurricane Katrina. However,
this blame was exclusive to FEMA and government officials such as the Mayor and
Governor.[9] In
regards to the Eichmann trial Arendt discusses a “ubiquitous complicity”. She
points out that while the prosecutor put forth many testimonies of the horror
of the holocaust, none of these acts directly related to Eichmann. Arendt
argues that the prosecution ignored the larger issue that a sense of
“ubiquitous complicity… stretched far beyond the ranks of Party membership.[10] This “ubiquitous complicity” that Arendt talks about it clear in the Select
Bipartisan Committee’s investigation. Their report states, “If 9/11 was a failure of
imagination, then Katrina was a failure of initiative. It was a failure of
leadership.”[11] The Committee is pointing their finger towards the Louisiana and FEMA
leadership, similar to the Nuremberg trials and the Eichmann trials. However,
as Arendt points out ordinary people who participated in perpetuating the
poverty and structural failures of Louisiana are to blame too. Dyson and Elliot state, “there are 37 million
people in poverty in our nation, 1.1 million of whom fell below the poverty
line in 2004. Some of the poorest folk in the nation, people in the Delta, have
been largely ignored, rendered invisible, officially forgotten.”[12] This quote demonstrates that the issue of poverty did not simply appear after
Hurricane Katrina. People choose to ignore poverty because it makes them feel
comfortable. Disasters like Hurricane Katrina place issues of poverty at the
forefront and people can donate money to feel that their responsibility to this
is removed, similar to the Eichmann trial and the Select Bipartisan Committee
Investigation. According to Dyson and
Elliot, “…The government and society had been failing to pay attention to the
poor since long before one of the worst natural disasters in the nation’s
history swallowed the poor and spit them back up. The world saw just how much
we hadn’t seen; it witnessed our negligence up close in frightfully full
color.”[13] Disasters like Hurricane Katrina reveal the willful ignorance of society to
issues of social justice. People choose to take action through criminal
proceedings and works of charity once that sense of comfort is disrupted.
 |
| Figure 1.0 |
The
bureaucratization of disaster halted aid to many people suffering, especially
with FEMA. In Eichmann in Jerusalem,
Arendt argues that bureaucratization leads to willful ignorance because tasks
are so narrowly defined that no one person is directly responsible for
anything. For Eichmann this meant that he could claim no responsibility for his
part in the holocaust. Arendt argues that bureaucracies work to sustain
themselves by placing guilt on one individual and making it seem as if this one
person is the problem rather than the system itself.[14] This bureaucratic preservation can be seen in FEMA’s lack of urgency in
responding to Hurricane Katrina. As hundreds of people were dying in the
streets and stuck in the New Orleans Superdome without food FEMA struggled
through bureaucratic obstacles to aid.[15] FEMA’s director, Michael Brown, was blamed for the ineffectiveness of FEMA. The
media depicted people stranded on rooftops and dead bodies floating in the
water whereas FEMA maintained that they had no way to get to these people
portrayed.[16] Michael Brown was criticized for FEMA’s failures to respond timely and resigned
not long after. The blame and resignation Michael Brown further proves Arendt’s
argument against bureaucracies. Despite FEMA’s ineffectiveness and lack of
timely response they were able to preserve themselves by pointing to the
failures of Michael Brown. Rather than fixing the system and working to
ameliorate the failures that led to the issues of disaster relief, FEMA worked
to preserve their bureaucracy by pushing out Michael Brown. Arendt argues that
this bureaucratization is a product of modernity. Arendt implies that the bureaucratization
that is demonstrated through Eichmann is not a problem solely pertaining to the
Nazi party. This same issue of bureaucratization is still present today, as
seen through the problems with FEMA. The choice to ignore the repercussions of
seemingly minute actions makes bureaucratization especially dangerous.
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| Taken from: NewsOne |
The
injustices seen before and in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina demonstrate
how damaging willful ignorance can be. As Arendt points out, responsibility for
a disaster cannot solely be blamed on those directly responsible. Those who
engaged in willful ignorance by knowing that injustice was occurring but did
not act should also be held responsible for their own inaction.
Citations:
[1] “Hurricane Katrina Overview,” FEMA, August, 28, 2015, https://www.fema.gov/hurricane-katrina-overview#
[2] U.S. House of Representatives, Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina, A Failure of Initiative: Final Report of the Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina, report prepared by Tom Davis, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., 2006, Report 109-377, xi.
[3] Guy B. Adams and Danny L. Balfour, “Leadership, administrative evil and the ethics of Incompetence: the failed response to Hurricane Katrina,” in Public Sector Leadership: International Challenges and Perspectives, ed. Jeffrey A. Raffel, Peter Leisink, Anthony E. Middlebrooks (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited: 2009), 301.
[4] Michael Eric Dyson, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster (New
York: Basic Civitas, 2006) 3.
[5] Full Text: Bush’s Katrina Speech: Address of the President to the Nation,” Think Progress, September 15, 2005, https://thinkprogress.org/full-text-bushs-katrina-speech-37aa6dd3f6f#.gufvr1gzb
[6] Michael Eric Dyson, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster (New York: Basic Civitas, 2006) 77.
[7] Michael Eric Dyson, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster (New York: Basic Civitas, 2006) 78-79
[8] Michael Eric Dyson, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster (New York: Basic Civitas, 2006) 80.
[9] Guy B. Adams and Danny L. Balfour, “Leadership, administrative evil and the ethics of Incompetence”, 304.
[10] Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: The Viking Press, 1963), 13. http://platypus1917.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/arendt_eichmanninjerusalem.pdf
[11] U.S. House of Representatives, Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina, A Failure of Initiative, report prepared by Tom Davis, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., 2006, Report 109-377, xi.
[12] Michael Eric Dyson, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster (New York: Basic Civitas, 2006) 4.
[13] Michael Eric Dyson, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster (New York: Basic Civitas, 2006) 4.
[14] Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: The Viking Press, 1963), 57. http://platypus1917.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/arendt_eichmanninjerusalem.pdf
[15] Michael Eric Dyson, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster (New York: Basic Civitas, 2006) 6.
[16] Michael Eric Dyson, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster (New York: Basic Civitas, 2006) 6.
Figure 2.0- Bush was criticized for this specific photograph numerous times because it shows a barrier, the plane, between him and New Orleans.
[5] Full Text: Bush’s Katrina Speech: Address of the President to the Nation,” Think Progress, September 15, 2005, https://thinkprogress.org/full-text-bushs-katrina-speech-37aa6dd3f6f#.gufvr1gzb
[6] Michael Eric Dyson, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster (New York: Basic Civitas, 2006) 77.
[7] Michael Eric Dyson, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster (New York: Basic Civitas, 2006) 78-79
[8] Michael Eric Dyson, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster (New York: Basic Civitas, 2006) 80.
[9] Guy B. Adams and Danny L. Balfour, “Leadership, administrative evil and the ethics of Incompetence”, 304.
[10] Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: The Viking Press, 1963), 13. http://platypus1917.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/arendt_eichmanninjerusalem.pdf
[11] U.S. House of Representatives, Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina, A Failure of Initiative, report prepared by Tom Davis, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., 2006, Report 109-377, xi.
[12] Michael Eric Dyson, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster (New York: Basic Civitas, 2006) 4.
[13] Michael Eric Dyson, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster (New York: Basic Civitas, 2006) 4.
[14] Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: The Viking Press, 1963), 57. http://platypus1917.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/arendt_eichmanninjerusalem.pdf
[15] Michael Eric Dyson, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster (New York: Basic Civitas, 2006) 6.
[16] Michael Eric Dyson, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster (New York: Basic Civitas, 2006) 6.
Figure 2.0- Bush was criticized for this specific photograph numerous times because it shows a barrier, the plane, between him and New Orleans.
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