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Assault Rifles, Separated Families, and Murder in Their Eyes: Unasked Questions after Hurricane Katrina

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 August 2010

D'ANN R. PENNER
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Abstract

This essay critiques the trauma literature that includes African Americans who endured Hurricane Katrina's aftermath. It is concerned with possible dissonance between scholars' and subjects' agendas. Drawing on narratives from the the Saddest Days Oral History Project that Penner directed in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, she explores divergences between the most urgent traumatic concerns of her study's narrators and the dominant questions of Katrina mental health literature. Her focus is the survivors' perceptions of rescuers' intentions, a primary consideration in the assessment of potentially traumatizing events. The mental-health specialists, with minor exceptions, correctly predicted an overall surge in traumatic and depressive symptoms for Hurricane Katrina survivors. They were less effective in identifying causation, specifying type, and appreciating major differences between social groups and communities. For almost all of the African American narrators trapped in the city after the storm, the trauma of Katrina was experienced as the product of human beings, mainly armed law enforcement personnel and soldiers, brandishing assault rifles, acting disdainfully, and separating families. The event was made cataclysmic not by the winds or the floodwaters but by their descent into a militarized zone in which narrators seemed singled out for persecution because of their race/ethnicity (and gender). The traumatizing events that were omitted from the structured interview protocols, in particular the impact of the militarized response, have had the deepest impact on survivors' identity and ability to trust others.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 3: Hurricane Katrina: Five Years After , August 2010 , pp. 573 - 599
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 For a short biography and condensed version of his lengthy narrative transcript see D'Ann R. Penner and Keith C. Ferdinand, Overcoming Katrina: African Americans from the Crescent City and Beyond (New York: Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2009), 142–51.

2 The title “Saddest Days” was Clyde Robertson's inspiration.

3 Over the past four years, I have met with Owens and/or his wife in their apartment or at a nearby restaurant multiple times. Except when describing the events that deprived him of his neighborhood, he is a very quiet, mild-mannered man. Increasingly, Owens has turned inward, another sign of trauma.

4 Penner field notes (PFN) from personal communication with the author, Katy, TX, 17 Feb. 2008.

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16 Penner and Ferdinand, 49–59, 130–41, 175–80.

17 Coker et al., “Social and Mental Health Needs Assessment of Katrina Evacuees.”

18 See C. I. Harris and D. W. Carbado, “Loot or Find: Fact or Frame?” in D. D. Troutt, ed., After the Storm: Black Intellectuals Explore the Meaning of Hurricane Katrina (New York: New Press, 2007), 48–65.

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21 The physical process of expressing everything on Charles's mind was clearly stressful: he visibly trembled before the interview and he exuded nervous energy throughout the 90-minute conversation. Chad Charles, Memphis, TN, 3 Oct. 2005. Employment information throughout these interviews refers to the positions held before the storm. Ages given are at the time of Katrina. Unless otherwise stated, interviews were conducted solely by me and transcripts are housed at the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University. Baderinwa Ain and I interviewed Charles together.

22 Although I have conducted 275 interviews altogether of survivors of Hurricane Katrina after September 2005, I am choosing not to include in this essay the 150 I conducted in the summer of 2008 of women originally from housing developments because including them would skew the data set in favor of poorer women. There were men and women from two housing developments among the Saddest Days narrators. My overall understanding of trauma, however, was made more nuanced by both sets of interviews.

23 Richard F. Mollica, Healing Invisible Wounds: Paths to Hope and Recovery in a Violent World (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2006), 111. See also Lawrence L. Langer, Versions of Survival (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1982), 168.

24 John Beverley, “Testimonio, Subalternity, and Narrative Authority,” in Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, eds., Strategies of Qualitative Inquiry, 2nd edn, (London: SAGE Publications, 2003), 319–35; William G. Tierney, “Undaunted Courage: Life History and the Postmodern Challenge,” in ibid., 292–318.

25 Kevin Owens, Hoover, AL, 14 Dec. 2005.

26 Rita Charon, a clinician with a long history of working with traumatized people, has observed that she found patients more eager to tell than she sometimes was to listen. Charon, Rita and Speigel, Maura, “Framing the Conversation on Speechlessness, Testimony, and Indifference,” Literature and Medicine, 24, 2 (2005), 250–52Google Scholar, and Dori Laub, “Truth and Testimony,” in Cathy Caruth, ed., Trauma (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 61–75.

27 On “moral witnesses” see Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 148–62.

28 For an account of the incident see Penner and Ferdinand, Overcoming Katrina, 125.

29 Penner field notes of untaped conversation with Rochelle Smith, Houston, TX, 10 Jan. 2006.

30 Geoffrey H. Hartman, The Longest Shadow: In the Aftermath of the Holocaust (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996), 142.

31 Laura S. Brown, “Not Outside the Range: One Feminist Perspective on Psychic Trauma,” in Caruth, 110.

32 Kai T. Erikson, Everything in Its Path: Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976), 13.

33 Kleinman, Writing at the Margin: Discourse between Anthropology and Medicine (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), 177.

34 Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 33. Kai Erikson has been laboring to reinforce this vital distinction since his initial Buffalo Creek report; Kai Erikson, “Notes on Trauma and Community,” in Caruth, 183–99, 190.

35 Laub, Dori and Auerhahn, Nanette C., “Failed Empathy: A Central Theme in the Survivor's Holocaust Experience,” Psychoanalytic Psychology, 6, 4 (1989), 377–400CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 378.

36 On New Orleans see also Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster (New York: Viking, 2009), 245–46.

37 Mutter, John, “Preconditions of Disaster: Premonitions of Tragedy,” Social Research: An International Quarterly, 75, 3 (2008), 691–724Google Scholar.

38 Anika Pugh, Birmingham, AL, 14 Dec. 2005; and Charles.

39 Shriff Hasan, Houston, TX, 17 Oct. 2005; Raynauld Jones (conducted with Baderinwa Ain), Memphis, TN, 2 Sept. 2005; Pugh; Leonard Smith, Waterproof, LA, 8 Nov. 2005.

40 PFN, Kevin Owens, 14 Aug. 2008.

41 Kevin Owens, Birmingham, AL, 9 Dec. 2005.

42 Demetrius White, Houston, TX, 12 Jan. 2006.

43 Owens, Birmingham.

44 Kenneth Anderson, Birmingham, AL, 29 Dec. 2005.

45 Eleanor Thornton and Dwayne Chapman, Smyrna, GA, 6 Jan. 2006.

46 CNN Reports, 29; Shana Agid, “Locked and Loaded: The Prison Industrial Complex and the Response to Hurricane Katrina,” in Kristin A. Bates and Richelle S. Swan, eds., Through the Eye of Katrina: Social Justice in the United States (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2007), 56.

47 Brian Thevenot and Gordon Russell, “Reports of Anarchy at the Superdome Overstated,” Seattle Times, 2 Sept. 2005; and Gumbel, Andrew, “After the Storm, US Media Held to Account for Exaggerated Tales of Katrina Chaos,” Los Angeles Times, 28 Sept. 2005, A1Google Scholar.

48 Charles. Jones concurred with Charles's conclusion about individuals with substance-abuse problems and looting.

49 Thornton and Chapman, 6 Jan. 2006.

50 Venus McCoy, Birmingham, AL, 14 Dec. 2005.

51 See, for example, Owens; Hoover; Cynthia Banks, Dallas, TX, 15 Jan. 2006; and Rochelle Smith, Houston, TX, 10 Jan. 2006.

52 CNN Reports.

53 Barringer, Felicity and Newman, Maria, “Troops Bring Food, Water, and Promise of Order to New Orleans,” New York Times, 2 Sept. 2005, 1Google Scholar.

54 Chapman, 6 Jan. 2006.

55 Banks.

56 Hasan.

57 Rochelle Smith.

58 Carl Singleton, Birmingham, AL, 29 Dec. 2005.

59 Mr. Johnson suffers from sickle-cell anemia and is legally blind. Penner and Ferdinand, Overcoming Katrina, 79. The parts of Texas where the outdoor processing centers were stationed had not lost power as a result of Hurricane Katrina. Air-conditioned high-school gymnasiums or churches could have been used.

60 Agid, “Locked and Loaded,” 56.

61 Jermol Stinson, Dallas, TX, 15 Jan. 2006.

62 White and Smith. Both men, however, also used their military background to critique the entire rescue operation and gave it extremely low scores for effort, organization, utilization, and efficiency.

63 I am not suggesting that the military intended to kill the people of New Orleans. On military violence against black people during the aftermath see Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell, 234–35, 245–66.

64 Owens, Hoover, AL.

65 Charles.

66 Ibid.

67 Hasan.

68 This was the status quo as soon as Hasan reached the area outside the Superdome.

69 For photographs of this display of military might see CNN Reports, 81, 85; Robert Caldwell, “New Orleans: The Making of an Urban Catastrophe,” Monthly Review, 9 Dec, 2005; and Spike Lee's use of media footage in When the Levees Broke.

70 Owens, Hoover.

71 Huey P. Collins Jr., Birmingham, AL, 29 Dec. 2005.

72 Hasan.

73 Hasan.

74 Harold Toussaint, Decatur, GA, 8 Jan. 2006.

75 Pugh.

76 Leonard Smith.

77 Toussaint.

78 Alive in Truth Interview, Rene Kinsella interviewed by Brigid Shea, Austin, TX, 14 Sept. 2005.

79 Freddie Clark sat in on part of my interview with Rogers Branche, Birmingham, AL, 15 Dec. 2005. His interview is also housed at the ARC.

80 Owens, Hoover.

81 Rochelle Smith.

82 Pugh.

83 Mollica, 62, 73.

84 Margalit, The Ethics of Memory, 130.

85 Anderson.

86 Parnell Herbert, Houston, TX, 11 Jan. 2006.

87 Willie Pitford, New Orleans, LA, 29 May 2006.

88 Banks.

89 Thornton, 6 Jan. 2006.

90 Johnson. See also Owens, Hoover.

91 Owens, Hoover.

92 On perceptions of white privilege see Penner and Ferdinand, Overcoming Katrina, 53–54, 58, 70, 74–75, 103, 123–27, 137, 144–45, 164–65, 221, 222–24. On the Orleans Parish buses sent to rescue St. Bernard Parish survivors via Algiers Point Landing, I am indebted to Lance Hill, who found NGS satellite photographs confirming the evacuation and photographs taken by first responders. Hill also interviewed St. Bernardians who were evacuated on the buses.

93 PFN unrecorded interview with Cheryl Taylor, New Orleans, Feb. 2006.

94 Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, “Specificities: Peace-Time Crimes,” Social Identities, 3, 3 (1997), 471–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 473 and 479.

95 Dominick LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 171–72.

96 Maureen Dowd, “Dark Dark Dark,” New York Times, 21 Feb. 2009.

97 Dori Laub,“Bearing Witness or the Vicissitudes of Listening,” in Shoshanna Felman and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History (London: Routledge, 1991), 71.

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99 Penner and Ferdinand, 62–63, 153–56.

100 Herman, Trauma and Recovery.

101 By pragmatic solidarity, Paul Farmer means “the rapid deployment of our tools and resources to improve the health and well-being of those who suffer this [entrenched structural] violence.” Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 220.