When the levees broke: a commentary

Over the summer HBO aired Spike Lee’s awaited documentary, “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.” The four-Act film, about the devastation dropped on New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina, spanned over two nights in August, airing a total of four and a half hours. Longer than his epic film “Malcolm X” of 1992, Lee is to be applauded for his effort in showing the world (certainly for those of us in the States) what a category 5 hurricane can do to a city, and what a government can do to a people and what it will not do for a people. Clearly, the film exposed a modern day subjugation of a people and a view, perhaps, of what the African slave trade must have been like. Imagine the Superdome surrounded by water with people inside chained by a disaster, “sardined” with no electricity, no running water, no plumbing, no drinking water or available food, sleeping in, or amid, feces, urine, menstrual flow and death. Death in the surrounding water, death on the bridges, death lying unfound in homes. Indeed, every breath, in some instances, was a death breath.

Suddenly, we see a modern day slave ship fulfilling its qualifications and requirements of an African enslavement trade. What we see is a government slow to respond to its “home-land” tragedy and quick to respond to citizens of another place at the expense of its own citizens; its second-class citizens. Five days later when the government did respond, it scattered and sprinkled families like salt and pepper to places that, in many instances, they knew nothing about and knew no one in; separating families, taking children from mothers, brothers from sisters, husbands from wives, expanding and extending the diaspora. Indeed, parents let their children go so the rising waters of Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf of Mexico wouldn’t ravage their children. Through interviews of the survivors—everyday folk, actors, politicians, doctors, engineers—the piece exhibits and exposes the lack of care given to people of African descent and those that are poor, especially in the St. Bernard Parish, by a government supposedly, “for the people and by the people.”

As I watched the film, I was drawn into thinking of Lee’s nearly three and half hour “Malcolm X,” and I began to think of Malcolm’s speech, “The Ballot or the Bullet” particularly the one delivered in Detroit in 1964 (Malcolm delivered two speeches by the same name in two different locations, the other was delivered in Cleveland) I began to relate some of what he said then, to what we continue to see today, especially in the wake of Katrina and what people were saying in Lee’s film. Malcolm X’s commentary then provided a critical historical view of the now: The past in the present and the past of the present. Not only did it speak to the disaster of response to Katrina but the disaster of the current politics of that time and, this time. Here are some excerpts from his speech:

* “The time when white people can come in our community and get us to vote for them so that they can be our political leaders and tell us what to do and what not to do is long gone. By the same token, the time when that same white man, knowing that your eyes are too far open, can send another negro into the community and get you and me to support him so he can use him to lead us astray -- those days are long gone too.”

* “So we’re trapped, trapped, double-trapped, triple-trapped. Anywhere we go we find that we’re trapped. And every kind of solution that someone comes up with is just another trap.”

* “So as you can see brothers and sisters, today -- this afternoon, it’s not our intention to discuss religion. We’re going to forget religion. If we bring up religion, we’ll be in an argument, and the best way to keep away from arguments and differences, as I said earlier, put your religion at home -- in the closet. Keep it between you and your God.”

* “Whether you are a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Nationalist, we all have the same problem. They don’t hang you because you’re a Baptist; they hang you ‘cause you’re black. They attack all of us for the same reason…We’re all in the same bag, in the same boat. We suffer political oppression, economic exploitation, and social degradation -- all of them from the same enemy.”

* “The government has failed us; you can’t deny that…This government has failed us; the government itself has failed us, and the white liberals who have been posing as our friends have failed us.”

* “You and I have never seen democracy; all we’ve seen is hypocrisy. When we open our eyes today and look around America, we see America not through the eyes of someone who has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism, we see America through the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism. We don’t see any American dream; we’ve experienced only the American nightmare. We haven’t benefited from America’s democracy; we’ve only suffered from America’s hypocrisy.”

The travesty of Katrina is the travesty of our existence in the United States since the critical masses of us were brought now into the 21st century. In a time when we think that we’ve arrived, there is Katrina; when we think that we’re in control, there is Katrina; at a time when we seemingly have more, more money, better jobs, bigger homes, there is Katrina; at a time when we’re more “educated,” there is Katrina; when we think that we’re free and living in a democracy, there is the hypocrisy of Katrina. James Baldwin once said, “History is a nightmare. People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” It seems that we continue to be “trapped, trapped, double-trapped, triple-trapped.” “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts” is not easy viewing, but it is a necessary viewing. I hope it will wake us up, and clean us up, so that we can stand up. •

Najee is a Associate Professor of Cultural Studies in Education here at Ohio University.