In New Orleans, a new struggle
Black residents face joblessness, higher rate of coronavirus deaths
NEW ORLEANS – Levee breaches from Hurricane Katrina dumped 6 feet of water into the New Orleans home of Mary Duplessis and her husband in 2005. The house was uninhabitable. Rebuilding meant piles of paperwork in a mountain of bureaucracy. She didn’t return to the city for a year.
But as the 15th anniversary of the storm approaches, and as another monster storm narrowly missed the city, it’s not memories of Katrina that weigh on Duplessis’ mind. It’s the coronavirus.
The Black community of New Orleans, already economically lagging behind white residents before Katrina, was pummeled by the Category 3 storm that made landfall Aug. 29, 2005, and by the lengthy rebuilding process. Images of residents, mostly Black, on top of roofs, cars and at the Superdome stadium became the most iconic of a storm that revealed to the world a city starkly divided into haves and have-nots.
Today, the city is still majority African American but has nearly 100,000 fewer Black residents than it did before Katrina. Many couldn’t imagine the community taking a bigger hit than it did from Katrina, but in some ways, that’s happening with the pandemic. Data show New Orleans’ Black residents dying at greater rates – a trend mirrored nationally – and finding themselves less able to bounce back economically.
After Katrina, Duplessis’ husband, Barrett, was back at work within weeks. Now, he’s been out of work for nearly six months. They visit food banks and use disability checks and retirement savings to get by.
She fell ill with the virus in March, she said, was hospitalized for seven days. The list of people she knows who’ve died of COVID-19 is growing – a sisterin-law, two close friends.
“Every night I go to sleep, I say, ‘Is it going to ever be the same?’ ” Duplessis said. “We don’t know when this is going to be over with.”
Black people account for 60% of New Orleans’ population but 77% of its coronavirus deaths as of June, according to The Data Center, a New Orleans-area think tank. Among contributing factors, the study found: African Americans are more likely to live in multigenerational homes where it’s harder to self-isolate, and a larger proportion fill essential jobs that potentially put them in contact with infected people.
“My estimation of the COVID health and economic crisis is that it will be more severe on Black New Orleanians than Katrina was in terms of personal trauma, in terms of financial impact, in terms of potentially the number of deaths at the end of the day,” said Allison Plyer, of The Data Center.