Richard Valenty a writer of the Colorado Daily News raises in a recent news story the question:

“Might post-Katrina rescue efforts have been better if the citizens of New Orleans were predominantly white or of a higher socioeconomic class?”

Even as somebody not directly involved, living in another part of the world, this makes me think and I hope it is not true.

This kind of color blindness is different to a color vision deficiency. But both share some similaraties which have to be reconsidered.

• Both can and often are inherited from parents to their children. White or black, higher or lower class is often a mental attitude passed on from parents to their children. It is not present all of a sudden, it grows slowly and steadily.
• Both can see colors but have problems to classify them correctly. It is not about not being able to see the colors but about categorizing, sorting and classifying.
• Both are not talked about in public. People are hiding behind flowery phrases, don’t want to admit it and play it down.

I hope everybody can learn from Katrina and hopefully make it better if something like this ever happens again. It doesn’t only happen in this enormity. No. Sadly color blindness can be observed everyday on the roads and at work. Everybody has to work on it in the small to change it slowly but steadily in the large.

Direct link to the news story: Was Katrina Colorblind