Fact Checking: "Only rich white folks evacuated NOLA"
My buddy Jim over at Serotoninrain posted something that includes the following quote from an NPR commentator:
Well, that makes a very catchy quote but, unfortunately, it doesn't stand up under closer scrutiny. Let's do a little number crunching, shall we...exercise those atrophied math skills and try out a little logic for a change.
I popped over to this page to pull some statistics about New Orleans's demographics (from the 2000 US Census), and here's what I found. 67.25% of NOLA's population of 484,674 is African-American, which computes to 325,943 souls. Now, let's assume that 80,000 citizens didn't evacuate, for whatever reason. I just pulled that number out of the air; it's several times the number that showed up at the Superdome.
Further assuming that every white person -- all 135,951 of them -- in NOLA evacuated (which we know is not the case), and all Asians and other races also left (21,657) that left 327,156 African-American citizens. Still with me? Good.
Now, if 80,000 stayed behind and they were all African-American, simple math (the only kind I'm remotely capable of performing) tells us that 247,156 members of that racial demographic hightailed it out of town when instructed to do so. That's a quarter million people and over half of the total population of New Orleans.
Perhaps NPR was just watching the wrong interstate. But ignoring the facts in favor of a catchy quote is inexcusable, and such hyperbole adds nothing constructive to the conversation.
Charles, thanks for that stat; I was too lazy to try to find it, but I thought I was in the ballpark. (Frankly, I'm not sure how the mayor knows the number either. At this point, I doubt that anyone does.)
Posted by: Eric at September 3, 2005 07:59 PMOh, come on, Eric. You left out all mention of how fast the cars were traveling or what day they left. How's a person supposed to do the math here? ;-)
Nice work!
Posted by: Gwynne at September 4, 2005 03:20 AMRacism? No. Poverty, I should say.
Posted by: Daniel Morris at September 4, 2005 09:03 AMGwynne, your CPA is showing! ;-)
Daniel, I didn't try to do this calculation based on socioeconomic status (not that I'd know how), but there's no doubt in my mind that the top 80% of the population -- based on wealth and regardless of race -- evacuated the city. That seems to lead to a whole other set of implications which might be less incendiary but not any less serious.
Posted by: Eric at September 4, 2005 06:07 PMAbout the publisher
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The Mayor was saying that there was approximately 80 percent compliance with the evacuation, which would leave about 97,000 folks in town. Close enough.
Posted by: CGHill at September 3, 2005 07:56 PM