president bush

There was a fleeting moment in the aftermath of the Katrina debacle, August 29, 2005, when the message that there are a lot of poor in New Orleans and America who are routinely ignored, neglected, and reviled had gotten through. In that very fleeting moment, there was a torrent of new studies and reports that flowed out on poverty in America, especially black poverty. Legions of state and local officials made flowery references to the plight of the poor. This was all accompanied by candid media shots of and even interviews with families trapped in dire poverty. Then, President Bush even upped the federal ante on spending on relief and reconstruction in New Orleans.

That was a decade ago. That fleeting moment when the plight of the poor grabbed the national spotlight was just that, very fleeting. Five months before the decade remembrance of Katrina, The Data Center, a New Orleans-based research organization, issued a report that told just how fleeting that moment that paid attention to poverty was. It found that not only were just as many children living in poverty in New Orleans today as at the time of Katrina but that the percentage in poverty was nearly 20 percent higher than the national average. This is despite the sharp drop in the city's population and child population.