Let America Be America Again

Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,Tangled in that ancient endless chain Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! Of work the men! Of take the pay! Of owning everything for one's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all.I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers! I am the man who never got ahead, The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream In the Old World while still a serf of kings, Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned That's made America the land it has become. O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home--For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore, And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea, And torn from Black Africa's strand I came To build a "homeland of the free."
The free?
Who said the free? Not me? Surely not me? The millions on relief today? The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay? For all the dreams we've dreamed And all the songs we've sung And all the hopes we've held And all the flags we've hung, The millions who have nothing for our pay--Except the dream that's almost dead today.
O, let America be America again--The land that never has been yet--And yet must be--the land where every man is free. The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people's lives, We must take back our land again, America!
O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath--America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain--All, all the stretch of these great green states--And make America again!

Langston Hughes
(1902-1967)


WSJ: White rich elude Orleans chaos, don't want poor blacks back
John Byrne

The Wall Street Journal front-page headline reads, "Old-Line Families / Escape Worst of Flood / And Plot the Future / Mr. O'Dwyer, at His Mansion, / Enjoys Highball With Ice; / Meeting With the Mayor."

That is, however, just the beginning. According to the (paid-restricted) Journal, New Orleans' wealthy white neighborhoods emerged very much intact, while black neighborhoods are swimming in toxic sludge. The Journal piece, by Christopher Cooper, reads as something torn from the pages of Fitzgerald's iconic portrait of the roaring twenties--The Great Gatsby.
"NEW ORLEANS -- On a sultry morning earlier this week," Cooper writes, "Ashton O'Dwyer stepped out of his home on this city's grandest street and made a beeline for his neighbor's pool. Wearing nothing but a pair of blue swim trunks and carrying two milk jugs, he drew enough pool water to flush the toilet in his home."

He continues: "The mostly African-American neighborhoods of New Orleans are largely underwater, and the people who lived there have scattered across the country. But in many of the predominantly white and more affluent areas, streets are dry and passable. Gracious homes are mostly intact and powered by generators. Yesterday, officials reiterated that all residents must leave New Orleans, but it's still unclear how far they will go to enforce the order."
"The green expanse of Audubon Park, in the city's Uptown area, has doubled in recent days as a heliport for the city's rich -- and a terminus for the small armies of private security guards who have been dispatched to keep the homes there safe and habitable. Mr. O'Dwyer has cellphone service and ice cubes to cool off his highballs in the evening. By yesterday, the city water service even sprang to life, making the daily trips to his neighbor's pool unnecessary. A pair of oil-company engineers, dispatched by his son-in-law, delivered four cases of water, a box of delicacies including herring with mustard sauce and 15 gallons of generator gasoline."
How do they want the city rebuilt?

"The power elite of New Orleans -- whether they are still in the city or have moved temporarily to enclaves such as Destin, Fla., and Vail, Colo. -- insist the remade city won't simply restore the old order. New Orleans before the flood was burdened by a teeming underclass, substandard schools and a high crime rate. The city has few corporate headquarters.
"The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically," he says. "I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out."
Not every white business leader agrees, Cooper notes.
"Some black leaders and their allies in New Orleans fear that it boils down to preventing large numbers of blacks from returning to the city and eliminating the African-American voting majority. Rep. William Jefferson, a sharecropper's son who was educated at Harvard and is currently serving his eighth term in Congress, says, "This is an example of poor people forced to make choices because they don't have the money to do otherwise," Mr. Jefferson says.



America's Pretenses Washed Away:
By Scottie Lowe

Everyone has been affected by the news of Hurricane Katrina and it’s victims who happen to be largely of color. The media has made no attempt to hide its racist practices by portraying the economically disenfranchised Black people that live there, whose lives have been devastated and destroyed, as thugs, criminals, and lawless rouges while the fairer “victims” of Katrina are portrayed as helpless and defenseless survivors trapped in dehumanizing conditions. Down in Louisiana, with its vicious racist policies that allowed 30 percent of New Orleans’ residents of color to live below an acceptable standard of living and educational opportunity, with its governor having her lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, calling her own devastated constituents hoodlums and lawbreakers, the receding waters have revealed a frightening reality in this so-called land of opportunity.
The commander in chief, the leader of the free world that was elected for his supposed ability to lead this country in times of terror, turned an intentionally blind eye to relief efforts and arrogantly threw a pittance of aid and assistance as a appeasement to those that might question his reaction. A few sound bites and a few dollars absolves him of any guilt or complicity for the conditions of all the areas devastated by Katrina in which people of color and people with no means are involuntarily thrust into the limelight as America’s newest reality television stars. There’s no million-dollar prize at the end of this game of Survivor, there’s dehydration, starvation, and death for the losers and the winners get unimaginable nightmares that will haunt them for the rest of their natural lives.

White people (and Blacks that want to distance themselves from the heathen behaviors of the people on the news) want to point the finger of indignation and say, “Look at those animals, those ‘BLACKS’ down there, stealing televisions and creating chaos. Look at them fighting and behaving like beasts and savages.” White America can rest easy that Black people do in fact possess the inherent criminal/inferior gene that predisposes them to acts of lawlessness and savagery and it’s right there on the television to prove it. The assumption is always that white people would never behave that way under those catastrophic conditions.
They’re right. They are absolutely correct. White people have never lived as third class citizens in the richest nation in the world so it’s very reasonable to assume that white people would be able to afford to pack up and leave when the threat of impending danger was looming on the horizon. White people would not have to wait for days for food and water and dry clothing because there would be safe havens set up before the last rain drop fell that would have provided cute little tote bags of toiletries and snack foods, insurance agents to process claims and bank representatives to provide emergency loans as they got off the evacuation buses. White victims of a tragedy like this would have the nation rallying around them with signs of solidarity waving from SUVs and flagpoles all around the nation. Moreover, when white people eventually behaved in barbaric and uncivilized ways, the way anyone would do under such dire circumstances, there would be a psychological term slapped on it, a telethon to cure it, and the media would cover it more than the OJ Trial.
Newt Gingrich said, “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?” I’ll tell why the two are vastly different. God forbid there was planned act of terror that would occur in a US city, you’d see the nation rally around that cause, the draft would be reinstated with the quickness, hundreds of billions of dollars would be given to big businesses to aid them, and we’d be at war with Iran in three days time. Bush never intended to have a plan to respond to the victims of the hurricane and he hasn’t lost a minute’s sleep because of it. The plan to attack Iran has been in place since the same illegal plan to invade Iraq was set in motion. As long as there’s money to be made by Bush and his cronies, there’s a plan, a backup, and a contingency all outlined.
It’s estimated that it’s going to take an estimate $56 billion dollars to rebuild New Orleans. (That says nothing of the other devastated towns, hamlets and villages that don’t have TV cameras there to chronicle their devastation). Bush generously offered $10 billion dollars to the relief effort. I guess now he’s concerned about fiscal responsibility and pinching pennies because of the billions he’s spending to get an oil monopoly…I mean, building democracy in the Middle East. Why not cough up $100 billion, W? You are making exponentially more than that by charging us $4.00 a gallon for gas. Why do we, the American public, have to dig deep in our already strained pockets to aid in the relief of these victims? This is the richest nation in the world. Don’t pinch pennies when it comes to your own citizens.
Message boards all over the Internet are filled with posts from white people that are espousing hatred and rejoicing that Katrina caused such devastation and how they wished that it had killed all the (racial epithet) of New Orleans. Black America has been feeling the pain of the racist tone since the first reports of Black people being termed “looters” while white people were miraculously “finding” food. We are supposed to accept our lot in life and not complain because that’s the premise of this great nation. Black people, check your birth certificate to see if you are classified as three-fifths of a human being. Chances are, if you are poor and undereducated, it says you are because that’s the way the government is treating us.
Where are the cries of God Bless America that followed 9/11? I guess people want to save their prayers and petitions for causes all America can rally around, not just the Black people. Where was the emergency midnight session for Congress to pass illegal legislation like they did with one white woman who was already dead while thousands of living people suffered without food and water? Will America wear brown ribbons as a show of support for the flood victims of Katrina? I think not. It is with this faith that we as a nation will be able to hew out of the cesspool of despair a drop of hope.
Nothing will change. In two weeks, things will go back to normal. TV stations will go back to being focused on some white girl missing in the Caribbean, Sin City will have dried out and it will be old news. We’ll be tracking the next hurricane that is set to hit Florida and airlifting everyone from The Keys to Disney World to a safe haven. Black America will have digested yet another bitter racist pill and swallowed it with a xenophobic chaser. Katrina has washed away the pretense of equality in this country and we have been left exposed and vulnerable.



Blasphemy About New Orleans:
A God With Whom I Am Not Familiar
By Tim Wise

This is an open letter to the man sitting behind me at La Paz today, in Nashville, at lunchtime, with the Brooks Brothers shirt:
You don't know me. But I know you.
I watched you as you held hands with your tablemates at the restaurant where we both ate this afternoon. I listened as you prayed, and thanked God for the food you were about to eat, and for your own safety, several hundred miles away from the unfolding catastrophe in New Orleans.
You blessed your chimichanga in the name of Jesus Christ, and then proceeded to spend the better part of your meal – and mine, since I was too near your table to avoid hearing every word – morally scolding the people of that devastated city, heaping scorn on them for not heeding the warnings to leave before disaster struck. Then you attacked them – all of them, without distinction it seemed – for the behavior of a relative handful: those who have looted items like guns, or big screen TVs.
I heard you ask, amid the din of your colleagues "Amens," why it was that instead of pitching in to help their fellow Americans, the people of New Orleans instead – again, all of them in your mind – choose to steal and shoot at relief helicopters.
I watched you wipe salsa from the corners of your mouth, as you nodded agreement to the statement of one of your friends, sitting to your right, her hair neatly coiffed, her makeup flawless, her jewelry sparkling. When you asked, rhetorically, why it was that people were so much more decent amid the tragedy of 9-11, as compared to the aftermath of Katrina, she had offered her response, but only after apologizing for what she admitted was going to sound harsh.
"Well," Buffy explained. "It's probably because in New Orleans, it seems to be mostly poor people, and you know, they just don't have the same regard."
She then added that police should shoot the looters, and should have done so from the beginning, so as to send a message to the rest that theft would not be tolerated. You, who had just thanked Jesus for your chips and guacamole, said you agreed. They should be shot. Praise the Lord.
Your God is one with whom I am not familiar.
Two thoughts.
First, it is a very fortunate thing for you, and likely for me, that my two young children were with me as I sat there, choking back fish tacos and my own seething rage, listening to you pontificate about shit you know nothing about.
Have you ever even been to New Orleans?
And no, by that I don't mean the New Orleans of your company's sales conference. I don't mean Emeril's New Orleans, or the New Orleans of Uptown Mardi Gras parties.
I mean the New Orleans that is buried as if it were Atlantis, in places like the lower 9th ward: 98 percent black, 40 percent poor, where bodies are floating down the street, flowing with the water as it seeks its own level. Have you met the people from that New Orleans? The New Orleans that is dying as I write this, and as you order another sweet tea?
I didn't think so.
Your God – the one to whom you prayed today, and likely do before every meal, because this gesture proves what a good Christian you are – is one with whom I am not familiar.
Your God is one who you sincerely believe gives a flying fuck about your lunch. Your God is one who you seem to believe watches over you and blesses you, and brings good tidings your way, while simultaneously letting thousands of people watch their homes be destroyed, and perhaps ten thousand or more die, many of them in the streets for lack of water or food.
Did you ever stop to think just what a rancid asshole such a God would have to be, such that he would take care of the likes of you, while letting babies die in their mother's arms, and old people in wheelchairs, at the foot of Canal Street?
Your God is one with whom I am not familiar.
But no, it isn't God who's the asshole here, Skip (or Brad, or Braxton, or whatever your name is).
God doesn't feed you, and it isn't God that kept me from turning around and beating your lily white privileged ass today either.
God has nothing to do with it.
God doesn't care who wins the Super Bowl.
God doesn't help anyone win an Academy Award.
God didn't get you your last raise, or your SUV.
And if God is even half as tired as I am of having to listen to self-righteous bastards like you blame the victims of this nightmare for their fate, then you had best eat slowly from this point forward.
Why didn't they evacuate like they were told?
Are you serious?
There were 100,000 people in that city without cars. Folks who are too poor to own their own vehicle, and who rely on public transportation every day. I know this might shock you. They don't have a Hummer2, or whatever gas-guzzling piece of crap you either already own or probably are saving up for.
And no, they didn't just choose not to own a car because the buses are so gosh-darned efficient and great, as Rush Limbaugh implied, and as you likely heard, since you're the kind of person who hangs on the every word of such bloviating hacks as these.
Why did they loot?
Are you serious?
People are dying, in the streets, on live television. Fathers and mothers are watching their baby's eyes bulge in their skulls from dehydration, and you are begrudging them some Goddamned candy bars, diapers and water?
If anything the poor of New Orleans have exercised restraint.
Maybe you didn't know it, but the people of that city with whom you likely identify – the wealthy white folks of Uptown – were barely touched by this storm. Yeah, I guess God was watching over them: protecting them, and rewarding them for their faith and superior morality. If the folks downtown who are waiting desperately for their government to send help – a government whose resources have been stretched thin by a war that I'm sure you support, because you love freedom and democracy – were half as crazed as you think, they'd have marched down St. Charles Avenue and burned every mansion in sight. That they didn’t suggests a decency and compassion for their fellow man and woman that sadly people like you lack.
Can you even imagine what you would do in their place?
Can you imagine what would happen if it were well-off white folks stranded without buses to get them out, without nourishment, without hope?
Putting aside the absurdity of the imagery--after all, such folks always have the means to seek safety, or the money to rebuild, or the political significance to ensure a much speedier response for their concerns – can you just imagine?
Can you imagine what would happen if the pampered, overfed corporate class, which complains about taxes taking a third of their bloated incomes, had to sit in the hot sun for four, going on five days? Without a Margarita or hotel swimming pool to comfort them I mean?
Oh, and please, I know. I'm stereotyping you. Imagine that. I've assumed, based only on your words, what kind of person you are, even though I suppose I could be wrong. How does that feel Biff? Hurt your feelings? So sorry. But hey, at least my stereotypes of you aren't deadly. They won't effect your life one bit, unlike the ones you carry around with you and display within earshot of people like me, supposing that no one could possibly disagree.
But I'm not wrong, am I Chip? I know you. I see people like you all the time, in airports, in business suits, on their lunch breaks. People who will take advantage of any opportunity to ratify and reify their pre-existing prejudices towards the poor, towards black folks. You see the same three video loops of the same dozen or so looters on Fox News and you conclude that poor black people are crazy, immoral, criminal.
You, or others quite a bit like you, are the ones posting messages on chat room boards, calling looters sub-human "vermin," "scum," or "cockroaches." I heard you use the word "animals" three times today: you and that woman across from you – what was her name? Skyler?
What was it you said as you scooped the last bite of black beans and rice into your eager mouth? Like zoo animals? Yes, I think that was it.
Well Chuck, it's a free country, and so you certainly have the right I suppose to continue lecturing the poor, in between checking your Blackberry and dropping the kids off at soccer practice. If you want to believe that the poor of New Orleans are immoral and greedy, and unworthy of support at a time like this – or somehow more in need of your scolding than whatever donation you might make to a relief fund – so be it.
But let's leave God out of it, shall we? All of it.
Your God is one with whom I am not familiar, and I'd prefer to keep it that way.

Tim Wise is the author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (2005: Soft Skull Press). He lived in New Orleans from 1986-1996. He can be reached at timjwise@msn.com.




Grumblings as Some Countries Left Hanging After Offering Katrina Aid

Frustration mounted among European countries that have been stymied in their efforts to send aid to the United States in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, with tons of supplies sitting idly at airports awaiting a green light from Washington.
It is regrettable that our government's abysmal coordination in the early days of the recovery effort has prevented critical international aid from being delivered to our stricken citizens and communities in the affected Gulf States.
US Senator Patrick Leahy (Vermont)"Since last Saturday we have been waiting for permission to fly into the United States but so far we haven't got any response," lamented Claes Thorson, spokesman at the Swedish embassy in Washington.
Thorson said as soon as the United States appealed for foreign aid, his government loaded a transport plane with water purification equipment, temporary cell-phone networks, blankets and jerry cans.
But the Hercules C-130 has yet to be given permission to fly into the United States, despite repeated requests by Sweden, Thorson said.
"The only answer we get is that our request (to fly) has been suspended until further notice," he said.
According to European Union officials in Washington, the bloc's 25 members as well as five non-EU countries offered assistance after the hurricane struck, in the form of tents, generators, blankets, search-and-rescue teams, as well as forensic and logistics experts.
Andras Bacsi-Nagy, spokesman at the Hungarian embassy in Washington, said his country was willing to provide forensic experts to help identify the bodies of victims as well as other assistance but had yet to get a response from American officials.
"We made the offer right after the hurricane and since then we haven't had any replies," he said. "Of course, they were polite and nice (...) and we understand it takes a lot of time to sort through all these offers."
Switzerland has also offered aid and is awaiting a response as is the Czech Republic.
"All we can do is wait," Andreas Stauffer, of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), said.
Croatia on Friday said six of its forensic experts were waiting for the go-ahead from Washington to travel to the states pummeled by the hurricane.
Education and Science Minister Dragan Primorac told AFP that the team could provide "important help" due to the experience they gained in the country's 1991-1995 independence war.
US officials for their part say they are deeply grateful for the outpouring of sympathy but have appealed for patience in trying to sort through all the donations.
Harry Thomas, a State Department official in charge of coordinating international aid for the hurricane, said 95 countries had stepped forward and efforts were being made to match all the donations with needs on the ground.
"The last thing we want to do is take something that can't be utilized -- can't be utilized quickly, accurately and to the benefit of the American people," he told reporters. "So we have to look at each offer closely and we go back to people and we're doing that."
But not everyone on the domestic front is satisfied with Washington's response and critics are heaping blame on the administration for being woefully ill-prepared to handle the disaster and international offers of assistance.
"It is regrettable that our government's abysmal coordination in the early days of the recovery effort has prevented critical international aid from being delivered to our stricken citizens and communities in the affected Gulf States," Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, told a congressional hearing Thursday. "The sluggish response has left foreign governments frustrated and baffled."



UN Hits Back at US in Report Saying Parts of America are as Poor as Third World
by Paul Vallely

Parts of the United States are as poor as the Third World, according to a shocking United Nations report on global inequality.
The US is the only wealthy country with no universal health insurance system.
Claims that the New Orleans floods have laid bare a growing racial and economic divide in the US have, until now, been rejected by the American political establishment as emotional rhetoric. But yesterday's UN report provides statistical proof that for many - well beyond those affected by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina - the great American Dream is an ongoing nightmare.
The document constitutes a stinging attack on US policies at home and abroad in a fightback against moves by Washington to undermine next week's UN 60th anniversary conference which will be the biggest gathering of world leaders in history.
The annual Human Development Report normally concerns itself with the Third World, but the 2005 edition scrutinizes inequalities in health provision inside the US as part of a survey of how inequality worldwide is retarding the eradication of poverty.
It reveals that the infant mortality rate has been rising in the US for the past five years - and is now the same as Malaysia. America's black children are twice as likely as whites to die before their first birthday.
The report is bound to incense the Bush administration as it provides ammunition for critics who have claimed that the fiasco following Hurricane Katrina shows that Washington does not care about poor black Americans. But the 370-page document is critical of American policies towards poverty abroad as well as at home. And, in unusually outspoken language, it accuses the US of having "an overdeveloped military strategy and an under-developed strategy for human security".
"There is an urgent need to develop a collective security framework that goes beyond military responses to terrorism," it continues. " Poverty and social breakdown are core components of the global security threat."
The document, which was written by Kevin Watkins, the former head of research at Oxfam, will be seen as round two in the battle between the UN and the US, which regards the world body as an unnecessary constraint on its strategic interests and actions.
Last month John Bolton, the new US ambassador to the UN, submitted 750 amendments to the draft declaration for next week's summit to strengthen the UN and review progress towards its Millennium Development Goals to halve world poverty by 2015.
The report launched yesterday is a clear challenge to Washington. The Bush administration wants to replace multilateral solutions to international problems with a world order in which the US does as it likes on a bilateral basis.
"This is the UN coming out all guns firing," said one UN insider. "It means that, even if we have a lame duck secretary general after the Volcker report (on the oil-for-food scandal), the rest of the organization is not going to accept the US bilateralist agenda."
The clash on world poverty centers on the US policy of promoting growth and trade liberalization on the assumption that this will trickle down to the poor. But this will not stop children dying, the UN says. Growth alone will not reduce poverty so long as the poor are denied full access to health, education and other social provision. Among the world's poor, infant mortality is falling at less than half of the world average. To tackle that means tackling inequality - a message towards which John Bolton and his fellow US neocons are deeply hostile.
India and China, the UN says, have been very successful in wealth creation but have not enabled the poor to share in the process. A rapid decline in child mortality has therefore not materialized. Indeed, when it comes to reducing infant deaths, India has now been overtaken by Bangladesh, which is only growing a third as fast.
Poverty could be halved in just 17 years in Kenya if the poorest people were enabled to double the amount of economic growth they can achieve at present.
Inequality within countries is as stark as the gaps between countries, the UN says. Poverty is not the only issue here. The death rate for girls in India is now 50 per cent higher than for boys. Gender bias means girls are not given the same food as boys and are not taken to clinics as often when they are ill. Fetal scanning has also reduced the number of girls born.
The only way to eradicate poverty, it says, is to target inequalities. Unless that is done the Millennium Development Goals will never be met. And 41 million children will die unnecessarily over the next 10 years.
Decline in health care
Child mortality is on the rise in the United States
For half a century the US has seen a sustained decline in the number of children who die before their fifth birthday. But since 2000 this trend has been reversed.
Although the US leads the world in healthcare spending - per head of population it spends twice what other rich OECD nations spend on average, 13 per cent of its national income - this high level goes disproportionately on the care of white Americans. It has not been targeted to eradicate large disparities in infant death rates based on race, wealth and state of residence.
The infant mortality rate in the US is now the same as in Malaysia
High levels of spending on personal health care reflect America's cutting-edge medical technology and treatment. But the paradox at the heart of the US health system is that, because of inequalities in health financing, countries that spend substantially less than the US have, on average, a healthier population. A baby boy from one of the top 5 per cent richest families in America will live 25 per cent longer than a boy born in the bottom 5 per cent and the infant mortality rate in the US is the same as Malaysia, which has a quarter of America's income.
Blacks in Washington DC have a higher infant death rate than people in the Indian state of Kerala
The health of US citizens is influenced by differences in insurance, income, language and education. Black mothers are twice as likely as white mothers to give birth to a low birthweight baby. And their children are more likely to become ill.
Throughout the US black children are twice as likely to die before their first birthday.
Hispanic Americans are more than twice as likely as white Americans to have no health cover
The US is the only wealthy country with no universal health insurance system. Its mix of employer-based private insurance and public coverage does not reach all Americans. More than one in six people of working age lack insurance. One in three families living below the poverty line are uninsured. Just 13 per cent of white Americans are uninsured, compared with 21 per cent of blacks and 34 per cent of Hispanic Americans. Being born into an uninsured household increases the probability of death before the age of one by about 50 per cent.
More than a third of the uninsured say that they went without medical care last year because of cost
Uninsured Americans are less likely to have regular outpatient care, so they are more likely to be admitted to hospital for avoidable health problems.
More than 40 per cent of the uninsured do not have a regular place to receive medical treatment. More than a third say that they or someone in their family went without needed medical care, including prescription drugs, in the past year because they lacked the money to pay.
If the gap in health care between black and white Americans was eliminated it would save nearly 85,000 lives a year. Technological improvements in medicine save about 20,000 lives a year.
Child poverty rates in the United States are now more than 20 per cent
Child poverty is a particularly sensitive indicator for income poverty in rich countries. It is defined as living in a family with an income below 50 per cent of the national average.
The US - with Mexico - has the dubious distinction of seeing its child poverty rates increase to more than 20 per cent. In the UK - which at the end of the 1990s had one of the highest child poverty rates in Europe - the rise in child poverty, by contrast, has been reversed through increases in tax credits and benefits.




Magazine Content October 2001 issue
CIVIL ENGINEERING

Drowning New Orleans
A major hurricane could swamp New Orleans under 20 feet of water, killing thousands. Human activities along the Mississippi River have dramatically increased the risk, and now only massive reengineering of southeastern Louisiana can save the city
By Mark Fischetti




Created: Monday, September 05, 2005, at 21:13:20 EDT

Do you agree with former President Clinton that government "failed" the people in the aftermath of Katrina?

Yes
78%
307639 votes

No
22%
87875 votes

Total: 395514 votes
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Related:
Clinton: Government 'failed' people