This week we didn’t have a discussion because we had an exam. So this weeks blog post will be based off of a reading from Sister Citizen.

In the book, it was mentioned that African American women had it harder than any other group historically. Not only were they oppressed due to their race but they were oppressed due to their sex as well. Due to this they had to deal with not only gender roles but racial stereotypes as well.

The book then goes into a comparison of Zora N. Hurstons book Their Eyes Were Watching God and Hurricane Katrina. She analyzed the book and found how similar the situations of the African American character Janie in the book and the African American women of New Orleans was. For example, in both he book and Katrina people were told to evacuate, however, both Janie and many New Orleans citizens didn’t have the ability to evacuate (due to things such as transportation). Sister Citizen then goes into details about the aftermath of Katrina. Representative John Lewis publicly claimed the lack of assistance  was due to race. Famous rapper Kanye West also spoke on the situation talking about how the African Americans of New Orleans (New Orleans was a place where many African Americans lived,many lived in poverty) was portrayed in the media at a benefit concert for Hurricane Katrina survivors. When the lack of aid caused survivors to fend for themselves, people trying to find food or water were called “looters”. There was even a situation where a group of men who were trying to help the sick, elders, women and children were painted as criminals when media claimed they were a gang who was killing relief workers, raping women, and stealing electronics. It was perceived that it was the race of the men that had a huge role in that story.  Also, media referred to survivors as “refugees” which held the connotation that they were foreigners instead of American citizens. The author of Sister Citizen concluded that both Their Eyes Were Watching God and hurricane Katrina showed that racial hierarchy in American causes life or death consequences in America.