Political Effects of Population Displacement
In the days following the evacuation of New Orleans, Reuters reported that "nterviews with refugees in Houston, which is expecting many thousands of evacuees to remain, suggest that thousands of blacks who lost everything and had no insurance will end up living in Texas or other U.S. states," and Forbes Magazine notes that "those left homeless will take part in the biggest internal migration of people since the days of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression."
This and other reports suggest that the hurricane will have demographic consequences, particularly in and around Louisiana. Prior to the hurricane, Louisiana was one of a handful of states projected by the U.S. Census department to become a minority-majority state within the next two decades. Because a majority of displaced Louisiana residents are black, this occurrence will likely be delayed in Louisiana, but accelerated in nearby Florida, Georgia and Texas.
It has been noted that the displacement of a significant portion of African Americans from Louisiana is likely to shift the politics of that state in a more conservative direction. Louisiana may also lose a vote in the Electoral College following the 2010 U.S. Census.
Read more about this topic: Political Effects Of Hurricane Katrina
Famous quotes containing the words political, effects and/or population:
“As to your kind wishes for myself, allow me to say I can not enter the ring on the money basis—first, because, in the main, it is wrong; and secondly, I have not, and can not get, the money. I say, in the main, the use of money is wrong; but for certain objects, in a political contest, the use of some, is both right, and indispensable.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Let us learn to live coarsely, dress plainly, and lie hard. The least habit of dominion over the palate has certain good effects not easily estimated.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)