Wednesday Morning Rant

"If your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" is a popular idiom for obvious reasons. It defines the problem well in a manner that's fairly easy to visualize. Its usefulness is also distressingly common, as hammer-wielding policymakers, professors, commentators, economists, etc. continuously smash their hammers into non-nails and declare victory. Unlike Paul Anka, it isn't even amusing or memeable.

Of all the hammers out looking for nails whether they exist or not, there is probably none more common, loud and stupid than the hammer that is race. "Race" is a megahammer, slicing through the air at random. To the wielders of the race hammer, every problem is race and everything under the sun is a reflection of race. Highways? Race. Air conditioning? Race. Computers? Race. Pick a word and preface it with the word "racist" in your search engine of choice, and you'll find plenty of hits. It's the universal tool. Even natural disasters are racist.

That's the assessment by a professor at UConn, as reported in the Colgate campus newspaper following a speech there. How does racism make hurricanes happen? It doesn't of course - not even an American college professor is willing to go quite that far yet - but it's racism that makes them matter. You see, without racism, these disasters wouldn't matter nearly so much. His asinine nonsense is about Hurricane Katrina more than anything, but it could apply to any disaster you wish - which is perhaps fitting, seeing as this article was published the day that Helene was destroying Asheville:

He explained that viewing Katrina solely through its immediate aftermath ignores the deeper structural factors that left New Orleans so vulnerable. Horowitz highlighted the impact of state policies and environmental changes in creating conditions for disaster to strike, long before Hurricane Katrina hit the city. He described how the industrial canal flood wall, near the Lower Ninth Ward, was a product of longterm policies that enabled the development of flood-prone areas.

"The levees broke in 2005, but the turning point was 1915," Horowitz said.

That's a take. It's not a sensible take, but it's a take.

The fallibility of construction means that we shouldn't build. Poor people - largely black, in the case of New Orleans - living in marginal areas are at risk, so we should never develop marginal areas. If it hadn't been for the development, the disaster wouldn't have mattered. It wouldn't have been a disaster. Of course, there would also not be a major city there, or any of the economic and social opportunity that tends to be available in major cities. The people who live there would have to live somewhere else, and the poor folks who no longer live in the non-existent New Orleans would live in some other marginal place. It would still be racist, of course.

It's incredibly stupid, but at least this guy is out there teaching students:

First-year Carolina Hommen found Horowitz's thoughts on the misnomer of "natural disaster" enlightening.

"His point that there's 'no such thing as a natural disaster' really stood out to me. It's about context," Hommen said. "It's not just about the destruction of Katrina. Policies that were supposed to help ended up reinforcing inequality."

American academia, corporations, government, media, entertainment, etc. have three megahammers: race, sex and climate change. Everything is a nail to be smashed by one of those hammers. It doesn't matter if it makes sense. Just ignore reality and merrily swing your hammer.

posted by Joe Mannix at 11:00 AM

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