Katrina hurts non-poor hardest!

A Brown University professor cross-referenced FEMA damage maps with U.S. Census data and discovered these data: "the storm-damaged areas had been 75 percent black, compared to 46 percent black in undamaged areas of the city" and "29 percent of the households in damaged areas lived below the poverty line, compared with 24 percent of households in undamaged areas."

Of course, the news article proclaims that Hurricane Katrina hurt blacks and the poor much greater than non-blacks and non-poor. But really, now. 29% and 24% are statistically equal to each other, at least when compared to the 75% vs. 46%. The hurricane didn't hit poor neighborhoods. It damaged majority-black neighborhoods. Maybe the mayor and his cronies made those levees break because he's a racist. . . Nah. Well, yes, but no.

Anyway. . .

The point that I'm trying to make is that even if you claimed all the poor in the whole city were black (absurd), the storm-damaged areas would be 29% poor black, 25% non-black, and 46% non-poor black. The non-damaged areas would be 24% poor black, 54% non-black, and 22% non-poor black.

So Hurricane Katrina actually singled out neighborhoods with above-average levels of non-poor blacks!

Maybe somebody is trying to keep them down, after all. . .

Oh, and by the way, not many of any of them are moving back anytime soon. But who can blame them?