When I moved to New Orleans, I was told not to think of it as moving to a southern American city, but to a northern Caribbean city.  In reading an oped in the Times Picayune by Lolis Elie, then a scathing dissection of an ignorant Texas editorial by Mark Folse, and finally Lois’s desperate attempt not to surrender to cynicism (realism?), I realized that it’s becoming true. New Orleanians are increasingly less likely today to think of themselves as Americans first. The experience of dealing with the lies, the incompetence, the evasion of responsibility, and the sheer indifference has led many to re-evaluate their sense of national identity. This strikes me as a pretty big deal.

Reading these two pieces reminded me of something I noted back in March, imagining the metaphorical NOLA Family:

But the wisest members of the Nola family are the ones most worth watching. They’re heartbroken, and you can see the impending sense of doom on their faces. Every day, they become more and more convinced the neighborhood will abandon them, that they are the poor that the neighborhood wants out of sight. They work on the property alongside their family, but they are humiliated, and they work without hope. In their darkest moments, they have come to suspect something awful: There is no neighborhood.

I generally shy away from writing about this kind of thing directly because I’m not an American citizen. I moved to the United States from southern Ontario with my family for school and now work eight years ago. But up until this point, since I was happy enough to enjoy the educational and work opportunities, I’ve been loath to criticize too strongly the host country that has made these possible. But now there is a choice to be made, since I have and increasing sense of solidarity with the people of New Orleans, which is incompatible with cheerfully painting over the fault lines I see.

Part of this comes from a recent exchange with my friend Lyle, a federal investigator who lives on the west coast.  He was in a group of volunteers who came in September while the city was still flooded. He’s read this blog all the way along. He sent these questions along to my wife:

I’ve been following the blog and have a question – Is the target audience predominately those affected most by Katrina?  I assume this because, while I see some response in the blog from SF, I also see that most of the politics / issues in the blog are specific and localized.  Am I thinking correctly? . . . (Or is the Katrina issue assumed to be a national issue?)

My wife was too scandalized by the questions to respond, but I thought they were great, so I asked him to expand on why he thought this was a local issue. He graciously responded with a thoughtful letter that engaged many of my posts in some detail. But he remains unconvinced that he should care overly much about what is going on, more than any other tragic situation in the world anyway. He thinks three of my posts have done a good job of addressing that problem -- the foreign policy argument, the economic argument, and (less so) the common good argument. He advises:

...if the post-Katrina issue is to be a national concern, then it must be presented where an economic (environmental? cultural?) cost analysis takes the place of altruism and benevolence…

I guess this part of the argument cannot be stressed enough. Some might think I’m being overly repetitive (Harry Shearer gets accused of it often enough), but we are not looking for altruism or benevolence. We are now, sadly, much too wise to expect such things at the government level. So once again: Hurricane Katrina only grazed New Orleans, and did a fairly unremarkable amount of damage to the city proper. However, Eastern New Orleans and the Ninth Ward were doomed by poor engineering design in the MRGO (Mississippi River Gulf Outlet), while the rest of the City was destroyed by levees that failed despite stresses well below their design tolerances. Both systems were designed by the same federal agency: the Army Corps of Engineers. They have admitted their responsibility. Thus, it is simply a case of the nation cleaning up its own mess.

But in the interest of understanding the mindset here, let’s pretend that it really was a natural disaster that destroyed New Orleans. Let’s pretend the basic responsibility of cleaning up your own mess wasn’t in play.  What then?

Justice and morality?  I waffle over this.  I don’t know if the abandonment of NOLA would be any more of a moral issue than the abandonment of Pompeii.  Show me (and I type this very politely).  What is my moral obligation?  I am concerned with the struggle, but concern can never replace action.

This is a really interesting request, chiefly because it seems Lyle doesn’t feel any natural obligation to the people of another American city. In other words New Orleans has no advantages over, say, Vancouver or Mexico City (or Pompeii, apparently) when appealing for some sort of action on our behalf. But here’s the thing: I cannot show him why he should care. If Lyle’s moral imagination is such that the suffering of his fellow citizens leaves him unmoved (to action), then I can do little to the years of formation that allowed him to see his own country that way.

The question I have is: how is it that this is how the moral imagination of so many Americans works? Lyle’s response to this is not odd – the only notable thing about it is its thoughtfulness. This is, ironically, a very Republican question, but whatever happened to civic virtue? Lyle chides me, “Remember, Americans – nay, civil democracies – tend to vote with their wallets.” Sorry, but no getting off the hook. Other civil democracies do not vote relentlessly with their wallets the way Americans do.

I remember advocating for a policy addressing child poverty back in my university days by saying “Canadians don’t let other Canadians starve.” It was a very effective rhetorical strategy; even those who didn’t much care about the plight of the poor didn’t want to look like they didn’t care. I’ve tried variations of this several times in arguments here – Americans don’t let other Americans starve/needlessly suffer/die from lack of inoculation/be uneducated – and I’m still amazed at the range of responses. Those who agree that such a statement should work treat me with gentle condescension. Others are openly shocked, as the dean of Boston College Law was when I assumed that rehabilitation played at least some role in the penal system. Most, however, are confused by this. They, like Lyle simply do not see what the suffering of people they do not know has to do with them.

So I understand Lolis’ despondence when he says:

All those old stories about the greatness of America's past accomplishments are cheapened when compared with the mediocrity of its current callousness. The history of America's shining moments means nothing, absolutely nothing, unless it informs and guides our behavior today.

And if it turns out that such things do not inform and guide America’s behavior, then we will get more and more examples of Markus’ rage:

I think the real problem is we that we're an embarrassment that you, as an American, own lock, stock and barrel, but would rather not admit to. Well, that's too damn bad. We're the poster children for what greed and race and Jesus have done to this country, writ large and ugly…If that doesn't please you, perhaps we should reconsider our desire to resume full membership in the United States and its economy. Maybe we should start to look for another country that would like to have us. Or start our own. That way we'll be certain to get our fair share of the oil revenue that comes from or crosses our land. And we needn't be an embarrassment to you or that eastern banker's son who pretends to be from Texas or the rest of Katrina-weary America.

For the most part, the sense of rage and helplessness that the poor feel is never given voice by the poor themselves. They lack the political standing (immigrants), or they lack the ability to articulate things in a way that others can understand. But in New Orleans there are now many who understand, as Lolis and Markus do, that American citizenship has no intrinsic benefits when you need a hand to help you up, especially if your situation is embarrassing to the rest of the nation. These people are intelligent and articulate, and are wondering what their citizenship means.

In his oped, Lolis quotes Michael Ignatieff, former Harvard K School prof who has since gone back to Canada to be a member of Parliament:

"The most terrible price of Katrina -- everyone can see this -- was not the destruction of lives and property, terrible though this was. The worst of it was the damage done to the ties that bind Americans together."

I’m afraid that I must direct a little of that gentle condescension to Ignatieff.  What “ties that bind” are you talking about? Maybe Lois Dunn is right and they used to be there, but it’s time to wake up, folks.

There is no neighborhood.