Tornadoes, the American South, and Domestic Imperialism

    American culture and national identity form one of the central pillars of this blog, but I've neglected it of late in favor of the other acting pillars, namely those pertaining to feminism and Islam.
    In the interest of correcting this trend, but also giving voice to a subject on which I’m ashamed to have kept silent, I’d like to extend belated condolences to the victims of April’s tornadoes, and my support for its survivors.
    During my travels through the American South, one of the elements that most impressed me was its air of resilience and durability, a theme that exploded in the public consciousness with Katrina in 2005, and that recent assault of tornadoes on Alabama and neighboring states has again brought to the public eye.
     A New York Times article reports on Mr. and Mrs. Walker, two mobile home residents in rural Alabama.
     In the morning hours of April 27th, a tornado pulverized their dwelling and buried them in rubble, making their survival more than a little miraculous. Their community immediately reached out to assist them, providing them with food, shelter, and clothing, and the support needed to get through the trauma.  Readers can draw their own conclusions from the story, but I find proof of the region's tenacity in the testimony of Mrs. Walker’s son:  “People take care of their own here . . . the South has risen again.”
    I would be loath to omit a resonance between sections of the South and the Third World.
    “Third World” is a term I appropriate with the utmost caution, given its condescending and at times bigoted connotations, but it’s one that I feel best communicates the way in which Washington handles its southern neighbors. Though the relationship is of course nuanced and by no means monolithic, there have been a depressing number of occurrences that made clear the privilege that the more economically sound North has enjoyed with respect to the South.
    Katrina stands out as a prominent example, a disaster that placed the Gulf States at the mercy of Washington, which in turn failed to utilize its power to assist the region for nearly 72 hours.  The story of the Walkers offer a gloomy update to this legacy, one that indicts not only our own government but the international community as well: citing as an excuse the remoteness of the Walkers' residence – a dirt road in northeastern Alabama – the Red Cross failed to arrive at the scene until three days after the tornadoes tore through.
    Yet it’s not simply the power to rescue or neglect the ills of the South that puts Washington in a privileged position, but also its power to set the agenda. While our fellow Americans struggle to recover from the second-deadliest tornado outbreak in our nation’s history, ad nauseum reports of Bin Laden’s last hours and its implications for the endless “War on Terror” have saturated the media. With the exception of the Walkers’ story, itself presented as a somewhat saccharine “human interest story,” the New York Times has been largely silent on the matter since the end of April. A visit to today's home page shows only one mention of the disaster, located in the lower-left hand corner, visible only after scrolling down.
    All of this strikes a familiar tone with Washington’s response to the earthquake in Haiti, to the floods in Pakistan, to the cyclone in Myanmar, and so forth.
    Domestic imperialism is by no means preferable to hegemony abroad. I would love it if our leaders could get their act straight.