A recent analysis, The Impact of Katrina: Race and Class in Storm-Damaged Neighborhoods shows disparities in storm damage vary greatly according to socio-economic factors, and, of course, race. According to the report, led by Professor John Logan of Brown University, 48.5% of the damaged areas had a majority African American population, compared to 26.4% in the undamaged areas.

Logan concludes that if the post-Katrina city were limited to the population previously living in areas that were undamaged by the storm, New Orleans is at risk of losing more than 80 % of its black population.

Sadly, the African American voter turn-out for the mayoral primaries last Saturday reinforces the validity of this prediction. According to The New York Times white voter turnout is always larger than black. But this time, the gap was double its normal size and consisted largely of blacks displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

Ironically, though civil rights leaders chartered four buses to commute displaced residents from Houston to New Orleans to vote in the early elections, only six people showed up.

Have those people left forever, as the lack of voter participation indicates? Are they waiting to see what happens in New Orleans before they decide where to live? I speculate that a lot of people were frustrated by the reconstruction maps in New Orleans. One security officer told me that it hurt to see "the green zones" because that is where his family used to live. Many people have been washed out of New Orleans, and have no possibility of return in the near future because there is nowhere to live.

An excellent article in Tuesday's Times contrasts the lives of several New Orleanians who were displaced after the hurricane. The Marcell family found better schools, better neighborhoods, and more middle-class black families in Atlanta. For Sheb Akmin, the pace was too fast and she was appalled that her neighbors didn't know each other's names. Fortunately, Akmin has found a place to live back in New Orleans.

For most people, current rental rates, due to the high demand (construction workers temporarily located in New Orleans can afford inflated prices) are too exorbitant to even consider moving back. Since 47.5% of the homes in damaged areas were occupied by renters, this means that half of the population (in 80% of the city) can't afford to come home.