I recently watched a five-part documentary on Hurricane Katrina on Nat Geo that I highly recommend. The documentary was very informative, featuring firsthand accounts from survivors, police officers, and military personnel.
What stood out to me was how politicians, journalists/news media, and officers from the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) fabricated stories in order to avoid rendering aid to the poor Black people of New Orleans. These fabricated stories were used as justification for killing Black men—by both NOPD officers and white vigilantes. The narratives included claims that a sniper had been shooting at a helicopter and that there was widespread lawlessness and violence, which contributed to panic and hysteria. These stories were unsubstantiated, and many Black people died as a result of not receiving aid or being evacuated.
Legitimizing Myths (LMs)
The fabricated stories created by politicians, journalists/media outlets, and police officers are what Social Dominance Theory (SDT) refers to as legitimizing myths (LMs).
According to Sidanius and Pratto (1999):
Legitimizing myths consist of attitudes, values, beliefs, stereotypes, and ideologies that provide moral and intellectual justification for the social practices that distribute social value within the social system (p. 45).
The LMs trafficked by politicians, journalists, and police conveyed the implicit message that Black people are not human and that Black men are dangerous criminals. Group-based hierarchy is maintained in part by legitimizing myths. The extent to which an individual sanctions LMs correlates with whether they endorse, desire, and support group-based social hierarchy.
Dehumanization
One survivor stated that the Black people of New Orleans had lost their humanity in the eyes of those who were supposed to help them. But what this survivor may not be aware of is that Black people are not viewed as human. I addressed this issue in my book.
Goff et al. (2008) found that both majority white and non-white individuals implicitly associate Black people (Black male faces were used in the experiments) with apes, while exhibiting a white–ape inhibition effect. Thus, Black Americans are mentally represented as less evolved—with a closer relationship to apes—while white individuals are represented as more evolved and symbolic of humanity. This Black–ape association was found to alter visual perception and increase the endorsement of violence against Black suspects in criminal justice contexts.
In addition, news articles about Black Americans convicted of capital crimes were more likely to contain ape-relevant language than those about white convicts. Moreover, those implicitly framed as more ape-like were more likely to be executed by the state than those who were not framed this way (Cooper, 2024, p. 189).
Goff et al.’s (2008) research revealed a Black–white humanity taxonomy where white people are conceptualized as representing humanity, and Black people as the opposite polarity.
Black males inhabit what Fanon (1952) refers to as the zone of nonbeing. This space, as described by Warren (2018), is a metaphysical nothing that sustains anti-Blackness—where Black people experience existence (i.e., inhabitation) but not Being.
Human is not a biological category but an ideological construct. Wynter (1992) interrogates this construct, revealing how "the human" is defined by whiteness and optimal middle-class variants. Black males are shut out of humanity, which is reserved for whites, along with the moral obligations reserved for those considered human.
The connection between humanism and whiteness, and dehumanization and Blackness, has deep historical and sociological implications. Humanism and colonialism are part of the same cognitive–political universe, structuring Europe’s self-discovery as "human" and the simultaneous discovery of its Others (i.e., the darker races) as nonhuman or nonbeing. This entailed the construction of "Man" as a biological ideal and the systematic degradation of non-European men and women.
White people experience the fullness of being human, which is verified by the absence of humanity ascribed to Black people. Black men and women experience their existence and lack of humanity in relation to whiteness. Therefore, Blackness is positioned as the antithesis of humanity (Cooper, 2024, p. 187).
Dehumanization is considered the worst type of discrimination a group can experience—and is a precursor to genocide. The Black people of New Orleans were never viewed as human, which enabled their dehumanization. Moreover, humanistic psychology and therapy models fail to address the critical problem of who is conferred humanity and who is not.
Black Death & Dying
Between 1,390 and 1,833 people died during Hurricane Katrina, and over 51 percent were Black, with 80 percent of those missing also being Black. According to Sharkey (2007), a significant number of Black Americans died in numbers that exceeded expectations based on their population size and age distribution in and around New Orleans.
Many people died due to the lack of responsive government intervention. Some may characterize the government's response as benign neglect, but this minimizes the magnitude of what happened and the intentionality behind the decisions made by politicians. LMs justified a hostile response that included aggression and violence, rather than aid and evacuation.
A grim example is the slow governmental response, during which the corpses of Black victims were left floating in the streets of New Orleans. Over half (51 percent) of those who died were Black. This disaster should be analyzed not only as a natural catastrophe but as an event used to hasten Black death and dying (Cooper, 2024, p. 183).
What we are witnessing is how a dominant group can sanction a psycho-social apparatus—and mobilize its resources, including politicians, journalists and media outlets, and police officers—in the wake of a natural disaster to ensure that an undercaste group remains in a subordinated position marked by neglect, suffering, and even death. Rather than providing humanitarian aid—a moral response owed to those regarded as human—these institutional actors functioned as instruments of terror and social control, reinforcing racial hierarchy under the guise of chaos management and public safety.
We should never forget Hurricane Katrina and the truths it exposed.
Sound off if you watch this documentary.
References
Brunkard, J., Namulanda, G., & Ratard, R. (2008). Hurricane Katrina deaths, Louisiana, 2005. Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, 2(4), 215–223.
Buncombe, A. B. (2015, August 29). Family of black man killed and burned by police still fighting for justice 10 years after Katrina. The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/hurricane-katrina-anniversary-family-of-black-man-killed-and-burned-by-police-still-fighting-for-justice-10478313.html
Cooper, Y. (2024). Black men and racial trauma: Impacts, disparities, and interventions. Routledge.
Fanon, F. (1952). Black skin/White masks. Grove Press.
Five New Orleans Police Officers Sentenced on Civil Rights and Obstruction of Justice Violations in the Danziger Bridge Shooting Case (Press release). FBI. April 4, 2012.
Goff, P. A., Eberhardt, J. L., Williams, M. J., & Jackson, M. C. (2008). Not yet human: implicit knowledge, historical dehumanization, and contemporary consequences. Journal of personality and social psychology, 94(2), 292-306.
Katrina’s hidden race war: In aftermath of storm, white vigilante groups shot 11 African Americans in New Orleans. (2008, December 19). Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/19/katrinas_hidden_race_war_in_aftermath
Lartey, J. (2018, October 18). White man who shot three black men during Hurricane Katrina pleads guilty. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/18/hurricane-katrina-roland-bourgeois-jr-shooting-hate-crime
Sharkey, P. (2007). Survival and death in New Orleans: An empirical look at the human impact of Katrina. Journal of Black Studies, 37(4), 482-501.
Sidanius, J., & Pratto, F. (1999). Social dominance: An intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression. Cambridge University Press.
Warren, C. L. (2018). Ontological terror: Blackness, nihilism, and emancipation. Duke University Press.
Wynter, S. (1992). No humans involved: An open letter to my colleagues. Voices of the African Diaspora, 8(2), 13–18.
I had no idea white people basically went on a hunting spree for black people. The joy they had bragging about their kills. War hero’s don’t talk about their crimes..but these fools are laughing around the BBQ about how they took a life, for no other reason but that they are black. I can’t understand it. I camt stop thinking about it. I can’t understand how you can laugh about hurting another person, but I wasn’t raised by racist people who dehumanize others. Thank God.