The lower ninth was going under, again. Floodwaters from Hurri- cane Rita had breached the levee along the Industrial Canal, inundat- ing die poor New Orleans neighbor- hood that is, or was, home to 40,000 African-Americans. The levee had been patched after it failed in Hurricane Katrina, but not well enough. Cedric Richmond, the president of the Black Caucus in the Louisiana State Legislature, suggested that more than bad luck was at work. "For whatever reason," he told NEWSWEEK, "they didn't put the same effort into fixing the Industrial Canal as they did into the 17th Street Canal." The 17th Street Canal borders a largely white, middle-class area. Richmond did not spell out what he meant by "for whatever reason," but the implication was clear enough. It is simply assumed by many residents of the Lower Ninth that the powers that be of the city of New Orleans would just as soon never rebuild the ward, and that the reasons have as much to do with race and class as they do with geography. The Lower Ninth is mostly below sea level; it is also 98 percent black, very poor and crime-ridden.
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