New Orleans Reconstruction Pits Latinos vs Blacks

*After Katrina, black residents returned to find they had been displaced by undocumented workers, hired by reconstruction companies. There was an expected negative reaction. From the article: “Sentiments … that Latinos were stealing African-American jobs, have been encouraged by contractors who see the opportunity to divide and conquer — or, at least, provide the least pay and weakest protections to their workers.” But now blacks and Latinos have found the power of fighting injustice together, building solidarity and equity.

By Nathan C. Martin, Next City

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, while tens of thousands of the city’s African-American residents were dispersed across the country — 100,000 of whom have yet to return — a huge number of Latino workers were drawn to New Orleans by jobs created by the rebuilding process. As working-class African Americans trickled back, many found that the construction jobs they would have otherwise filled were already occupied by these new immigrants.

Dominant cultures have relied on the existence of permanent underclasses to sustain their positions of privilege throughout history. Perhaps nowhere in the United States is this more articulately pronounced than in the Gulf South, where chattel slavery gave way first to legalized segregation, and then to the more nuanced system we have today that allows a white upper class to retain the vast majority of wealth and power among a largely poor African-American community.

In New Orleans after Katrina, the arrival of these Latino immigrants, some of whom came to the country illegally, provided the power structure with an entirely new underclass.

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