Cri du Coeur

A volunteer psychologist's account of evacuee conditions in Dallas September 9, 2005:

Katrina kicked the top off of a racist and social termite's nest that has been growing beneath the ground since Reconstruction. These were deeply religious people who have lost God and for that matter, faith and hope.

Hope has been replaced by magical thinking that augurs a second and
more terrible level of social disruption and anger not far down the road.

Over and over, I kept hearing a framing of self that puzzled me until I realized that this is how it must have been for blacks after
Reconstruction. Over and over, people said, "everyone has been so
wonderful, thank you, thank you." When I said, "there is no need to
thank us, you are our fellow citizens and we want to help you--Americanto American," there would be a long pause as if the idea of being the same never struck them before.