The war on terror and post-Katrina New Orleans belong to two different worlds, but share a common property; the fate of the marginalized, the forgotten ones, in the global society. This study aims to show how they were forgotten; how the poor, at home and overseas, have been perceived, and how that perception differs from who they actually are.
The paper is divided into three parts. The first establishes the cognitive framework that captures and stigmatizes the poor; the second argue that there has been a perceptual flight away from the poor, at home and abroad, enhancing social neglect over ‘the other America’ at home and frustrated communities abroad. For the final part, I make several observations based on a field work in post-Katrina New Orleans, digging into their own cognitive framework that departs so far away from the assumption and prejudice that have been cast upon them.
The perceived role of the poor people in political life has swung wildly over the past 200 years. The first is that of helpless people at the mercy of destiny, soaked in miserable lives and longing for help. The other is an image of the militant poor, who direct their frustrations into actions that challenge political authority or distribution of goods.
The two images have led to three distinct reactions toward the poor. The first is charity; since the last days of the Roman empire, the Christian manner of helping the poor have extended to NGO activities at home and abroad, some more secular than others. Social policy is different from charity in the sense that the agent is the state, and the purpose can be crisis management. The second is surveillance and control. If the angry poor pose a challenge to law and order, an obvious response will be the employment of police power. The opposite side of the coin will be solidarity and revolution; an angry mob may be an asset for social change.
In the golden days of Great Society and Cold War development aids, the charity-social policy nexus dominated the scene; in the following years, such attention to charity, social engineering and development gave way to a combination of free market and coercive surveillance. The last section shows the urban myth that many of the African American community share, which may be sustained in the future due to their prolonged marginalization.
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