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Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies

Selected Works

Hurricane Katrina

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

The Political Tsunami: Not All Death And Destruction Is Natural, Michael I. Niman Ph.D. Dec 2009

The Political Tsunami: Not All Death And Destruction Is Natural, Michael I. Niman Ph.D.

Michael I Niman Ph.D.

Unlike many disasters that befall the Third and Fourth Worlds, the 2004 Tsunami was both large and unique enough to dominate the western press. The stories in the mainstream media, however, were rather simplistic, sticking to a feel good script of nations uniting to offer aid to the tidal wave’s unfortunate victims. Meanwhile, without much media attention, the Indonesian government used the cover of the Tsunami and the ensuing relief efforts, to intensify its war against rebels in its break-away Ache province – which suffered from the brunt of the Tsunami. Also ignored by the western mass media, was the …


“'Roots Run Deep Here': The Construction Of Black New Orleans In Post-Katrina Tourism Narratives", Lynnell L. Thomas Aug 2009

“'Roots Run Deep Here': The Construction Of Black New Orleans In Post-Katrina Tourism Narratives", Lynnell L. Thomas

Lynnell Thomas

This article explores the emergent post-Katrina tourism narrative and its ambivalent racialization of the city. Tourism officials are compelled to acknowledge a New Orleans outside the traditional tourist boundaries – primarily black, often poor, and still largely neglected by the city and national governments. On the other hand, tourism promoters do not relinquish (and do not allow tourists to relinquish) the myths of racial exoticism and white supremacist desire for a construction of blacks as artistically talented but socially inferior.


“‘The City I Used To...Visit’: Tourist New Orleans And The Racialized Response To Hurricane Katrina”, Lynnell Thomas Dec 2006

“‘The City I Used To...Visit’: Tourist New Orleans And The Racialized Response To Hurricane Katrina”, Lynnell Thomas

Lynnell Thomas

This article explores the connections between New Orleans’s late 20th-century tourism representations and the mainstream media coverage and national images of the city immediately following Hurricane Katrina. It pays particular attention to the ways that race and class are employed in both instances to create and perpetuate a distorted sense of place that ignore the historical and contemporary realities of the city’s African American population.