News media focused on looting, not Black residents being denied food, water, and shelter

When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans 20 years ago on August 28, 2005, many of the city’s Black residents, especially those in the Lower 9th Ward, didn’t own cars or even know how to drive to flee the oncoming flood. The buses weren’t running. Some companies eventually sent buses, but no drivers because they were afraid of coming into the city, because all the news media reported was that looting and murders were widespread.

Some 100,000 to 150,000 residents remained in the city to sit out the hurricane and to hope for the best, or they stayed because they had no other place to go.

Many were left without food, safe drinking water, and shelter, but as one woman in Spike Lee’s Netflix documentary “Katrina: Come Hell and High Water” said, they were seeking help but were treated like criminals. 

In the film, we see one Black cop holding a shotgun on men taking food from a store in circumstances where it was impossible to procure food otherwise.

The series also points out racist language in news coverage. On the pages of national newspapers, headlines announced “The Looting Instinct,” “Thugs Reign of Terror,” and the like.

For the first days after the hurricane, news outlets focused on what we now know to be greatly exaggerated individual acts of crime and violence. 

White residents stealing from grocery stores were described as “finding” food and beverages for their families, while Black residents doing the same thing were described as looters.

Even reporter Soledad O’Brien, who covered the Katrina from start to finish, admitted she fell into the trap of calling Black people looters and comparing them with White people seeking food.

Eddie Compass, New Orleans Chief of Police, said snipers were firing at helicopters, and Governor Kathleen Blanco repeated that there were snipers. Blanco ordered police to shoot to kill. 

Mayor Ray Nagin fired Compass.

Instead, we learned that people on the ground were trying to get attention so someone would rescue them. 

They were not snipers, said General Russal L. Honore, who is the only hero in this disaster. He ordered members of the National Guard to put their “Goddamn guns down and begin helping people.”

Hurricane Katrina killed 1,392 people, including 520 direct deaths, 341 of which were in Louisiana, according to the National Hurricane Center in 2023. Hurricane Katrina’s 175 miles per hour winds caused $320 billion in damage when the levee broke, flooding the city.

Men and women huddled in the Superdome to escape the baking heat, while others walked the highway leading from New Orleans.

The documentary shows Black men, women, and children floating face down in the water populated by venomous snakes and crocodiles.

Others stood on their rooftops, holding waving towels, signaling for help. 

President George W. Bush cut his vacation short to fly over the devastation, but he never went to New Orleans.

He had declined to visit the impacted areas right away so as not to impede recovery efforts. But that’s not what people saw. 

The image of the White, Republican president gazing distantly from above was a made-for-TV contrast with the images coming out of heavily Black, Democratic New Orleans. To many Americans, it was a far cry from the Bush who had triumphantly stood with firefighters in the rubble of the World Trade Center days after 9/11, the Bush who had famously said, “I can hear you.” 

Bush faced almost immediate criticism from Democrats, but several Republicans would soon join in. “If we can’t respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we’re prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?” former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich asked. 

Then-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney called the federal response “embarrassing.” And a 2006 report by House Republicans would later criticize Bush’s Department of Homeland Security for inaction that resulted in a delayed evacuation of New Orleans. 

On Sept. 2, Bush toured the Gulf Coast and signed a Congressionally approved $10 billion relief package. 

He pledged to crack down on crime, restore power, and get supplies to the needy. He even appeared to criticize his own disaster officials, saying he was satisfied with the government’s response, but “not satisfied with all the results.” 

That same day, Kanye West would go on TV and proclaim what many were already thinking: “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people.”

All three parts of Katrina: Come Hell and High Water are available on Netflix.