The Katrina-Politans

The Katrina-Politians:
A Meditation on Movement, Citizenship and the Katrina Generation
by Mark Anthony Neal

Can “niggas” be cosmopolitan? The answer was emphatically no, two years ago, as we all witnessed the drama(s) of misery and suffering unfold in New Orleans and the rest of the gulf coast region. To be cosmopolitan suggests an access to economic resources and the leisure time to travel the world unfettered by the demands faced by everyday folk. But those black bodies that that made themselves visible in the days after Hurricane Katrina made its landing were not “everyday folk”—they were “niggas” and “niggas” is perhaps apropos for a nation that struggled to name the landlocked and waterlogged black bodies that encroached upon the casual comforts and carefree expectations of our tiny little worlds. We called them “looters,” “refugees,” “unfortunate,” “sinners,” “animals,” “hapless” and “helpless”—anything but citizens. And it is in this context that I’d like to offer yet another linguistic reference: “Katrina-Politans,” a term that obviously references notions of cosmopolitanism, but more so draws from Taiye Tuakli-Wosornu’s decidedly classed concept of Afro-Politians—those Africans who live in the world. What is to be said about the humanity, desires and survivalisms of those black bodies that bore witness to Katrina’s fiercest moments, even as they are deemed expendable, and dare continue to think themselves citizens of the world?

What I am suggesting here is a form of cosmopolitanism, that speaks to the relationship between those black bodies so many observed two years ago—bodies that were rendered visible, yet invisible at the same time—and the State. This is a type of cosmopolitanism marked, in part, by a symbolic homelessness from notions of mainstream American morality, political relevancy and cultural gravitas; a cosmopolitanism that finds resonance in the “Katrina Generation”—those black bodies that were deemed as little more than “refugees” by mainstream corporate media. In this regard the evoking of the term, “refugee” duly reinforced the inhumanity and foreignness of this population. In the early moments of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, the evoking of “refugees” also cast illegitimacy on those so called “refugees” who might view themselves as national subjects—citizens—deserving of relief in a moment of national crisis. The term “refugee” also cast aspirations on the desires of the “Katrina Generation” to seek citizenship in whatever locale they chose—or likely were forced—to relocate.

When Walter Mosley makes the point, as he recently did in The Nation, that “not only did our government fail to answer the call of its most vulnerable citizens during that fateful period; it still fails each and every day to rebuild, redeem and rescue those who are ignored because of their poverty, their race, their passage into old age,” he captures the tragic irony of Katrina’s aftermath: many Americans and dare I say the State, have never deemed those black bodies as legitimate citizens. In her book Black Cosmopolitanism, literary scholar Ifeoma Kiddoe Nwankwo suggests that efforts to deny black bodies access to the resources of the State, are historically related to fears among whites that blacks might view themselves as cosmopolitan subjects.


Read the Full Essay at CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com