http://www.wbez.org/programs/morning-shift/2015-08-17/nola-activist-chicago-tribune-editorial-calling-hurricane-katrina
“I find myself wishing for a storm in Chicago — an unpredictable, haughty, devastating swirl of fury. A dramatic levee break. Geysers bursting through manhole covers. A sleeping city, forced onto the rooftops,” she wrote. It was meant as a metaphor. But many readers called it tone deaf, clueless, or a sad display of white privilege. McQueary is white, and many of the more than 1,800 people who died during Katrina were elderly, poor, and black.
On Friday and over the weekend, the column spread around the internet — to New Orleans, to Washington, even internationally — and the backlash was swift and cutting.
“As someone who experienced Katrina first-hand, the ignorance in this column is trivializing, grotesque and upsetting,” one person wrote on Twitter.
Some readers defended McQueary and the Tribune, saying it was a bad metaphor, nothing more.
Down in the Big Easy, many residents took issue with McQueary’s glossed-over version of their city after Katrina. In her depiction, things are peachy. Government corruption has been rooted out. Dilapidated buildings have been torn down. The schools are great.
Our guest says that’s far from the case. We turn to Vanessa Gueringer, Vice President of “A Community Voice,” a non-profit community organization in New Orleans made up of and serving the working, poor, elderly, women, children, and families. (Photo: Flickr/Infrogmation of New Orleans)
