CONCLUSION (THOUGH IT STILL AIN’T OVER)

I have tried here to examine some of the problems that Katrina brought to light. Katrina reveals that America has very ineffective and costly policies for handling its problems. America ignores or fails to see its problems until it reaches a crisis point. Rather than post-hoc efforts to address past wrongs or disasters, America would do much better to see its problems and address them in advance. This is a goal that American citizens should urge. Yet, we cannot expect overnight results. As such, Americans have a duty to act as the community members and democrats they are to ensure the values of humanity and democracy. These policy and community projects are ones in which Muslim Americans in general and Blackamerican Muslims in particular have a great role to play. They should draw upon their internal mechanisms for consciousness of the invisible to promote a better America at the local and policy levels. In this way, we might, just might finally achieve the promise of democracy and equality.

Otherwise, the specter of invisibility persists. Ralph Ellison was not prescient; he was explaining problems that were extant then; and that exist now. Will they continue to exist in the future? The answer to that question depends on what we take from Katrina. For all the havoc she wreaked, Katrina at least gave us a means to see the invisible man. We must not forget her lessons to us all.

Intisar Rabb is a JD/PhD candidate at Yale Law School and Princeton University.

References

1 Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man (1947), prologue.

2 According to US Census Bureau 2004 statistics, Black households had the lowest median income ($30,134) and the highest poverty rate (24.7%). C. DeNavas-Walt, B. Protor and C.H. Lee, Income, Poverty and Health Coverage in the United States: 2004, U.S. Census Bureau (August 2005).

3 Christopher Morris, “In New Orleans, Once Again, the Irony of Southern History,” History News Network (September 3, 2005), available at hnn.us/articles/15163.html.

4 Cornel West, “Exiles from a City and from a Nation,” The Observer (Sunday, September 11, 2005 vailable at http://observer.guardian. co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1567247,00.html.

5 163 US 537 (1896).

6 347 US 483 (1954).

7 Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres have expanded on the notion of the miner’s canary in their book, The Miner’s Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy (Cambridge, Massachusetts & London: Harvard University Press, 2002). Prophet Muhammad is said to have related a parable with a similar message. He compared people to passengers on a boat; a hole anywhere on the boat will affect all, whether on the lower deck or the upper deck.

8 Archibald McIeish, quoted in Paul Taylor, Stepanie Robinson, Eddie Glaude, Ronald Sullivan, Jr., While Democracy Sleeps: A White Paper on Democratic Citizenship in the United States (New Haven, CT: The Jamestown Project, 2005).

9 W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Dover Publications, 1994) p.2.

10 Ibid.

11 www.themosquecares.com

12 www.imancentral.org

13 www.jamestownproject.org

14 www.adopt-a-katrina-family.com

15 www.irw.org/katrina

16 www.ummaclinic.org

17 www.imancentral.org

18 www.brotherhood-sistersol.org

19 www.ing.org

20 www.baitulsalaamnetwork.freehomepage.com

21 www.icantwecan.org

22 www.thejusticecenter.org