HURRICANE KATRINA: A MULTICULTURAL DISASTER

SPECIAL SECTION

PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

HURRICANE KATRINA: A MULTICULTURAL DISASTER

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SPECIAL SECTION OVERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i Bertha G. Holliday, PhD

Part 1: THE EVENT AND ITS AFTERMATH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii

International Quotes: What the World Saw and Said About Katrina and Racism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv

Eye Witness Report: Ignore the Dead; We Want the Living! Helping after the Storm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi

Eye Witness Report: Impact of Hurricane Katrina Among Tougaloo Students, Faculty and Administrators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

Katrina and Minority Serving Institutions: Challenges Faced, Problems Solved, Lessons Learned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

Evacuation Patterns of Ethnic Minority Populations Affected By Hurricane Katrina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiv

Part 2: PSYCHOLOGY RESPONDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii

APA Responds to Hurricane Katrina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xviii

APA Congressional Briefing: Ethnic Minority Children Experiencing Traumatic Events: Promoting Mental Health and Resilience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxii

Ethnic Minority Psychological Associations Respond to Hurricane Katrina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiv

APA Task Force on Multicultural Training and Disaster Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxvi

Part 3: MULTICULTURAL IMPERATIVES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxvii

The Spiritual Dimension of Caring for People Affected by Hurricane Katrina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxix

Association of Black Psychologists Provides Guidelines for Treatment of African American Hurricane Katrina Survivors . . . . . . . . xxxv

SPECIAL SECTION OVERVIEW

Bertha G. Holliday

The historical legacies of people of color in the United States ? such as our cross-generational experiences of oppression/colonization and resistance and their related trauma, the culture-rootedness of many of our values, behaviors, rituals ? continue to present special challenges for healing ... Like the survivors of Katrina, many of our people have endured the unimaginable. But the harshness and struggle of our experiences have often left us with deep scars whose pain sometimes reoccurs in the presence of exceptional stress and loss ? such as Hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters.... To ensure that cultural, psychological, and spiritual perspectives are included in disaster planning and response ... [and that first responders and providers of longer term assistance are trained in these perspectives] requires a significant investment of time and effort. Mental health and spiritual experts must learn and fully understand the disaster command structure and how it works; they must understand the methodology of the organized disaster response. In other words, if ethnic minority mental health and spiritual communities want to have a significant impact and role in their community's response to a disaster, they must have a PRE-EXISTING relationship with emergency planning and response agencies. This is the challenge of preparedness.

Holliday (2005), "Anatomy of a disaster"

Katrina and its aftermath continue to be hypnotizing, heartbreaking, and enraging. It is a tragedy of great scope and duration. Political, governmental, non-profit, and (contract) corporate sectors have all exhibited significant shortcomings and failures. Only the media seems to be on top of the situation: By and large , it got the story and got it nearly right ? with the notable exception of the nomenclature it initially used in referring to the hurricane's victims/evacuees/survivors, and the racially differentially labeling it initially appended to those survivors..

From a psychological perspective, we know those failures and their continuing sequalae will have enormous impact on the immediate and long-term health and behavior of affected communities, institutions, families and individuals. Consequently, we at OEMA could not watch this tragedy without comment.

OEMA extends its sincere condolences to all who have lost their grounding, their homes and/or their family members in the wake of Katrina. In memory of these, and as a gesture towards having some minor impact, we developed this Special Section on "Psychological perspectives: Hurricane Katrina - A multicultural disaster". This Section is divided intro three parts. The first part recaps and dissects the significance of the hurricane and its aftermath through contributions from

SPECIAL SECTION OVERVIEW

eyewitnesses, and descriptions of the hurricane's effects on various ethnic minority populations and institutions. Part 2 provides information on the responses to the hurricane (many of which are ongoing and in search of support and volunteers) by APA and its divisions, state and provincial psychological associations, and ethnic minority psychological associations. Part 3 provides specific guidance from psychologists of color for more effective response to multicultural populations affected by disasters. We hope this Special Section encourages you collectively and individually to make some small commitment, take some limited action that will serve to help both increase the multicultural competence of our disaster response capabilities throughout the nation, and ensure the multicultural disaster of Katrina will never ever occur again in these United States of America.

-ii-

Part 1:

THE EVENT And Its

AFTERMATH

With both passion and dispassion they told their mythic stories of going into attics; holding onto rooftops with children strapped to their bodies and watching some of those children - one by one - succumb to the surge and drop off into the swirling waters; holding onto wives who let go and gracefully sacrificed their lives to ensure the survival of others. Then there were the people in the wheelchairs with nowhere to go and no way to get there; the mothers dispossessed with nothing but the clothes on their back waiting patiently for help while carefully combing their toddler's hair. There were the people on rooftops with signs; the people terrorized in so-called safe public havens. There were the addicts without their drugs, mentally ill persons without their medications, children without their parents. There were folks floating on doors and plastic tubs in streets turned into rivers; there were the young men/old women in the face of death unable to leave their pets and unable to understand why. There were the determined marches to nowhere but an interstate overpass. In the face of the endless parade of reporters and their cameras ? there was no food, no water, no help -- day after day after day after day... And later, people being put onto buses and planes with destinations unknown to their prospective passengers. And then there were all the lessons on the infrastructure of New Orleans where one learned more about the mechanics -- and the politics -- of levees than one cared to know. Finally the troops arrived and the pumps started working and it seemed the morass might be at an end...But in the wake of Hurricane Rita, those levees broke a second time...

Holliday, (2005) "Anatomy of a disaster"

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