With each passing day, the Mississippi River nears or sets new flood records. This spring’s titanic rainfall in Missouri, Arkansas, and other states of the Mississippi Valley has threatened thousands of people’s homes and lives. While Memphis managed to survive the worst of the flooding, the river slowly flows on, toward Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and the rest of Louisiana, all still recovering from 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. On Saturday, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened the Morganza Spillway, flooding a large section of southern Louisiana, hoping to save the cities downriver.
People call this flood, as they call other natural disasters, an “Act of God.” This line of reasoning argues that tornadoes, hurricanes, naturally-caused fires, earthquakes, floods, and other disasters are uncontrolled by humans. Thus we bear no responsibility for the disaster.
Certainly this assumption is not entirely incorrect. Human beings hardly caused the Japanese earthquake. Despite the realities of climate change, we can’t say humans hold responsibility for any one hurricane, flood, or tornado. But natural disasters also put human inequality into sharp focus. Humans choose who bears the brunt of a given disaster, choices that often reflect long histories of race and class bias . The Japanese government invested in sophisticated technology to protect Tokyo buildings from destruction. It also placed nuclear power plants near earthquake fault lines.
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