From a Reuters story about Colin Powell and the flood:

“There was more than enough warning over time about the dangers to New Orleans. Not enough was done. I don’t think advantage was taken of the time that was available to us, and I just don’t know why,” Powell said in excerpts on ABC’s Web site. He said he did not think that race was a factor in the slow response, but that many of those unable to leave New Orleans in time were trapped by poverty which disproportionately affects blacks.

Memo to Reuters: poverty is not heart disease, high cholesterol or sickle cell anemia. As James Q. Wilson and many others have noted, you only have to do a few things to avoid living in poverty: graduate from high school, have no children out of wedlock, get a job and get married. In this richest of all countries, statistically speaking, poverty “affects” almost no one able bodied and of working age. It is far and away the result of very bad and easily avoided choices.

UPDATE

Would Reuters say that illegitimacy is merely a condition that “affects” people rather than a choice? That choice is a particularly powerful predictor of poverty. Roger Clegg in National Review:

The percentage of out-of-wedlock births for non-Hispanic whites is 21.9 percent, but for non-Hispanic blacks it’s 69.3 percent….But it hasn’t always been this way. In 1940, the black illegitimacy rate was 19 percent, less than what it is for whites now. Does it matter? Of course it matters. It is only common sense that 1.3 million illegitimate children is a significant national problem…..

In a lecture at the American Enterprise Institute a couple of years ago, Professor James Q. Wilson said that the empirical data regarding the importance of family structure is “so strong that even some sociologists believe it.” For instance: Children in one-parent families are twice as likely to drop out of school as those in two-parent homes. Boys in one-parent families are much more likely to be both out of school and out of work. Girls in one-parent families are twice as likely to have an out-of-wedlock birth.

Professor Wilson cites a Department of Health and Human Services study of 30,000 American households, which found that for whites, blacks, and Hispanics at every income level except for the very highest, children raised in single-parent homes were more likely to be suspended from school, to have emotional problems, and to behave badly. He added that another study showed that white children of an unmarried woman were much more likely than those in a two-parent family to become delinquents, even after controlling for income.

Perhaps Mr. Kanye West has some thoughts about the influence of hip hop culture on all this.

UPDATE II

Kanye West wasn’t much of a hit at the Patriots game last night, via the Globe:

And we got remotes of rapper Kanye West and pop rockers Maroon 5 from a generic-looking, red-white-and-blue stage in Los Angeles. Maroon 5 came off vapidly (doing just one song, ”Harder to Breathe”), while West did one tune, ”Heard ‘Em Say.” Yet it was disconcerting to hear his name booed loudly by Patriots fans who evidently didn’t appreciate his nationally televised comment the other night on a Hurricane Katrina benefit that President Bush ”doesn’t care about black people.” The boos were thunderous and lasted for much of his number.

Right on!

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