Social Stratification in the Deep South

I feel that it is incredibly important to preface this blog by saying that BY NO MEANS do I intend to marginalize any of the tragedies surrounding the people in Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi. Hurricane Katrina is an all encompassing tragedy that did NOT discriminate. It impacted all people’s lives without regard for class or social standing. It brought destruction and death and no matter what, the losses accumulated just a few years ago are extremely significant. With that being said, I think that it is important to note that the WORLD does in fact discriminate. This entire trip is a study on the stratification of the Deep South. This means that the essence of our course revolves around looking at the fact that there are those with and those without, people in power and people who are seemingly powerless, people who have a voice and people who go unheard. The current work that Bay Saint Louis is performing should be applauded in the highest. They are presently pulling themselves up by the proverbial bootstraps and although there is still work that needs to be done, each day they seem to be approaching some sense of relative stability. (Relative stability of course in comparison to conditions immediately after Hurricane Katrina.) For me to even begin imagining losing everything that I know and love, my home, is something I hope I never have to experience.

To continue the bootstraps metaphor, a question that I am forced to ask myself as I begin to analyze parts of this extremely difficult situation is: What happens to people who never had bootstraps, or even boots, in the first place to pull themselves up? It seems to me that Bay Saint Louis is a very close knit community with the means to make things happen. They seem to be very well connected to public offices and elected officials and quite capable in the areas of mobilizing efforts to get goals accomplished. For the less fortunate areas throughout the Gulf Coast and possibly the country, I feel that the inherent inequalities presently found in our society greatly disadvantage their opportunity to survive such a disaster. If two people run a race and one has a head start while the other has a delayed start, there is an obvious upper hand for the runner who receives the head start. Just as in life, there are people in our country who may have never even been up to a standard level of living before Katrina. Those very people would obviously be even less capable of surviving after such a deadly natural disaster.

What bothers me is not that anyone takes advantage of any opportunity afforded to them. Instead, I am upset at the fact that opportunities are never offered to all people because of socioeconomic differences. I think that there are numerous issues of accountability that arise when there is such a strong need for help in some damaged areas while others have been repaired. In communities where African-Americans or other minorities with fewer connections live, were relationships strong enough with people in high places to make things happen in a prompt manner or did they go unnoticed, forced to wait for help from a federal system that had already neglected many of their basic necessities prior to Katrina. The thing that angers me the most is the fact that if socioeconomic issues were more closely observed and better addressed by our government, perhaps, there would have been fewer deaths in this entire misfortune.