When the waters flooded New Orleans, they not only forced to the surface dead bodies but long buried issues about America.

I See Dead People

I'm 57 years old and cannot recall a time when I have ever seen dead bodies floating in water or left on the ground in an American city for days and days. This was startling.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist was buried with honors while citizens of New Orleans were left floating, face down.

This is the day America stopped being the most powerful country on earth.

Dead Ideals

Some of my friends say that race had nothing to do with the incredibly slow response of the federal government and that President Bush was unable to respond because state officials were fighting among themselves.

There is no such thing as objectivity when it comes to this kind of catastrophe. Like the gospel writers, each of us sees what we are pre-inclined to see.

I too have a viewpoint which is undoubtedly colored by my upbringing and my education.

Having been raised in near poverty I find it easy to understand why people were unwilling or unable to get out of town. If you've never lived at that level of powerlessness it is (virtually) impossible for you to relate to this.

I sat through the 1962 Columbus Day storm (the biggest to hit Seattle) huddled on the floor of our nearly empty rented house with my three sisters while my mom was being taken to the hospital. We didn't know where she was and no one came for us for several days. Not quite Hurricane Katrina, but we didn't know where to go or who to ask for help.

Reaping the Whirlwind

Having studied the causes of institutional racism in America, it seems clear to me. This wasn't a conscious choice, Bush didn't sit in the White House watching CNN and think to himself - "who cares, they're just a bunch of poor blacks who always vote Democratic" no, actually it was worse than that.

It was an unconscious, systemic and culturally entrenched set of values that empowered him (and his handlers) to wait and watch and then wait some more.

Historical realities are floating to the surface along with the dead bodies.

When you look into the eyes of the African Americans living in New Orleans you are staring back in time. You're seeing the fruit of centuries of injustice. You're looking at undereducated, undervalued and underdeveloped, men, women and children.

Katrina is forcing us to see the result of the mass kidnapping of millions of their ancestors 300 years ago now coming back to haunt us.

The Truth

If our nation's founding fathers had not "stolen" millions of African Americans and forced them to come to America to work for free the United Sates as we know it today would not be in existence.

These slaves (like today's Wal-Mart working poor) leveled the economic playing field so that we (The Colonies) could compete in international markets. Their free (and forced) labor provided our forefathers the profits they needed to continue to live in the manner to which they had become accustomed.

We are Japan

Do you think that the Japanese should apologize to Korea and China for the rapes and atrocities they committed against those countries in WWII?

I do.

In my opinion, we are no less responsible than they. We owe African Americans an apology. We need to repent of our callousness and casualness. We need to face the reality that irregardless of whether or not we personally sinned against them we have sinned against them as a society, as a people.

Please don't ask me to believe that if 20,000 middle class or (even) poor white people were surviving in the Superdome for 4 days with their children being raped and armed gunmen roaming and no armed forces to protect them that The President would not have acted faster.

Don't tell me that the President couldn't get into the Hurricane zone sooner due to airport breakdowns or security concerns – That's preposterous.

Green Berets – Navy Seals – Special Forces - Hello…

No doubt, incompetency, disorganization and bureaucracy all contributed to the chaos, but the bottom line as I see it, lies in the deeply held American belief that poor black people simply are not worth as much as white people. Our leader demonstrated as much in his passivity and denial.

We can try and sweep it under the rug. We can try to hand it off to our kids and their generation. But it only takes one Hurricane to expose the multi generational irresponsibility our forefathers have handed us.

Kanye Gets It

I voted for Bush but am grateful to not have that opportunity again.

I feel the same way about Clinton.

Bush and Clinton both embody some of the worst of our hidden values. They just got to play them out on a very large public stage. That's the liability a public person knowingly gambles with when they decide to "use" public celebrity to advance their cause, self or bank account.

Sorry, you only get one chance to make a first impression.

There are virtually no real leaders at the highest levels of influence in our country. Where are the black leaders? Where are the Mega Church pastors? Where is the noise? Why all the silence?

Where is a forthright national leader of any stripe who will risk his/her political future to speak the truth?

Once again rock and roll comes to the rescue.

For me, Rapper Kanye West came the closest when he spoke with emotional nakedness on national TV and said, "George Bush doesn't care about black people".

He could have said that about all of us.

God's Judgment?

If there is such as thing as God's judgment in any of this it isn't his anger with the gays of New Orleans but his disgust with the politicians and America's denial of the historical cost of kidnapping millions of black people from Africa to fuel our nation's earliest economy.

Now we've inherited their children and the curtain has been pulled back to reveal a people whom we have managed to rob of dignity while simultaneously making them dependent.

Which is another way to define slavery.

I want to help!

Jason Evans is a young leader living in San Diego with his wife and children. Together with their friends they live in intentional community and seek to serve those living near them.

Jason is one of those people who find it difficult to talk about stuff if you don't intend to do something. He has been making contacts with missional leaders in New Orleans and is planning to go there to visit with them and see how he can help.

Jason is a former editor of Next-Wave and is close friends with myself and Spencer Burke. Charlie Wear of Next-Wave, Spencer Burke of the Ooze and myself (Off The Map) have decided to get behind Jason and let people know about his project to help hurricane victims in the South.

We urge you to contribute finances, time and prayer to Jason's project. Learn more about what he is doing and how you can be a part here.