It takes a hurricane

From Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker, a disturbing analysis of Katrina's forcible relocation of many of the residents of the worst bomb-crater neighborhoods in New Orleans. The removal improved not only the lives of those who moved away but also the lives of those who stayed behind.  I don't know of any way to look at these results than to conclude that there is a poor black culture that can be improved--and can be prevented from dragging down the cultures it touches--only if it remains a locally diluted minority.  If you belonged to that culture, what could be a harder message to accept?

2 comments:

E Hines said...

It's not too different from a version of internal exile that's critical to some prison sentencing/rehab for drug offenders: you can't go back to that environment; you have to live somewhere else as a condition of parole.

Works there, too, at least better than letting them go back into the environment that led to their addiction.

Eric Hines

Ymar Sakar said...

Too many slaves creates a problem for the aristocrats. That's what. PP gets to farm them for profit and to reduce the numbers.