A Tale of Two Cities: Variations in Perceptions of Disaster Recovery and the Importance of Intersectionality

Gaining Access and Developing Trust

I tried to choose equal numbers of participants on the basis of race, class, and gender to show inter- and intracategorical variation. However, recruiting people of color proved to be far more difficult than I had anticipated in both locations. In Joplin, I reached out on social media to ministers of African American churches, advocacy groups, the NAACP, nonprofit organizations, and African American–owned restaurants, in addition to going to African American churches. I finally had a breakthrough when a local African American leader gave me five names of African Americans who were affected. I was then able to snowball-sample from those five individuals. In Tuscaloosa, the process was the same. I joined a Facebook group and contacted local leaders, organizations, the NAACP, city officials, and other community leaders. I hung out on the West Side (the most segregated part of Tuscaloosa) and tried striking up conversations with people of color. This led me to some respondents but not nearly the number I had hoped. In terms of demographics, people of color are overrepresented in Joplin and slightly underrepresented in Tuscaloosa. My Joplin sample is 29 percent people of color (the city is 12 percent), and my Tuscaloosa sample is 40 percent people of color (the city is 45 percent).

When I asked a local leader in the African American community in Joplin why this might be the case, he explained it to me like this:

“What good is it going to do?” And that’s how they feel. [They say to me] “You know what, I can talk about it until I’m blue in the face,” but these people don’t feel like they are going to be helped. What’s going to be done? They figure they just telling they [sic] story, again, but nothing ain’t going to get done. (Samson Carter, African American, middle class, July 2014, Joplin)

Moreover, I had to learn to be incredibly specific about my racial politics when talking to most people of color. I had to go into specific detail to explain that I was trying to expose racial inequality in long-term recovery and that I would do everything in my power to represent them and their experiences with accuracy.

Brief Histories

Joplin was platted in 1873, after the discovery of lead. After World War II, however, the value of lead dropped, and Joplin’s success in the mining industry diminished (Larsen 2004). Metals decreased in demand as it became cheaper to mine them in other countries. Joplin diversified its economy, but the majority of current jobs are still low-wage, blue-collar jobs. The median income is $15,000 less than the national average (roughly $52,000 in 2014), and the poverty rate is 19.2 percent, which is higher than the national rate of 13.5 percent. Sixty percent of households in Joplin have incomes less than $40,000.

Tuscaloosa was platted in 1819, the day before Alabama entered the union. Tuscaloosa is located in western Alabama along the Black Warrior River. In the 1830s, the primary economic activity was cotton farming, which relied on slave labor. After the Civil War, it took Tuscaloosa decades to recover economically (Flynt 2004). Although agriculture was the state’s main economic activity after Civil War, the Great Depression severely affected Alabama’s agricultural industry. In Tuscaloosa County, the main sources of income were agriculture, timber, and coal mining (Flynt 2004). Presently, inequality in college towns is pervasive (Florida and Mellander 2015). The median income in Tuscaloosa is $38,500, and the poverty rate is 26.3 percent. Tuscaloosa has one of the highest Gini coefficients in the country.

Sundown Towns: Joplin

The legacies of racism and racist policies are written into the landscapes of neighborhoods in both cities (for discussion of these mechanisms in the context of New Orleans, see Arena 2010; Bond-Graham 2007; Fussell 2007). Although Missouri does not have the same reputation as Deep South states, to argue that racial tension and fighting did not exist in southwestern Missouri would be incorrect. In Joplin, during reconstruction, the White population in the area boomed, and the African American population doubled.

Sundown towns refers to the process by which towns restricted the mobility and number of people of color in its city limits. Although most people think sundown towns simply kept African Americans out of areas after dark, Loewen (2005) wrote, “A sundown town is any organized jurisdiction that for decades kept African Americans or other groups from living in it and was thus ‘all-White’ on purpose” (p. 4). Although the policies varied from place to place, the goal was largely the same: to keep jurisdictions White. The history of sundown towns has been hidden in the nontraditional South and Midwest. Loewen conceptualized the racism from 1890 and after as the Great Retreat, a massive removal of people of color out of White spaces. Often, African Americans were forcibly removed or killed to enact sundown policies. This pattern is remarkably consistent across nonurban areas in the Midwest, West, and nontraditional South. City officials used sundown towns as a selling point for White migration into towns. “No negroes here” was often printed in newspapers and pamphlets from sundown towns. Loewen criticized scholars for not paying attention to sundown towns, but he brought up an important point: because White is the norm, whiteness is not interrogated. Sundown towns are a case in point. Loewen suggested that sundown towns were often created after White rioting and violence against people of color. This had a contagion effect, as African Americans would observe the violence occurring in other communities and then move away from these cities. After a lynching in Joplin in 1903, half of the city’s 770 African American citizens left. Loewen shows that the percentage of African Americans in Joplin was less in 2000 than it was in 1902 (and the trend continued in the 2010 census).

Segregation in Tuscaloosa

The struggle of African Americans after the Civil War and through Reconstruction is yet to be written. The history of African Americans in Alabama stops after the Civil War and begins with Jim Crow. In Alabama, Jim Crow officially began in 1901 with a new constitution that stripped voting rights from almost 200,000 African Americans who had been eligible to vote under the 1875 constitution (Flynt 2004). Flynt (2004) wrote, “The architects of the 1901 constitution frankly stated the arguments of class privilege and racism, which were paramount in their deliberations” (p. 28). Alabama did this by increasing voting restrictions due to criminal convictions. The constitution also contained other restrictions that were disenfranchising, such as poll taxes and literacy tests (Feldman 2005).

Three decades later, in 1933, after Vauldine Maddox, a young White woman, was murdered, the city simmered with anger, and three young African Americans, Dan Pippen, Jr., A. T. Harden, and Elmore “Honey” Clark, were arrested. Two of them were shot execution style and lynched. A month later, a paralytic African American man, Dennis Cross, was lynched for tearing a White woman’s dress (Hollars 2011). Moreover, Jim Crow laws and informal policies had the same effect as residential segregation in larger cities. In 1926, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that Whites could legally refuse to rent to African Americans (Wyatt v. Adair 1926). This case originated from Birmingham, a mere 58 miles from Tuscaloosa. Indeed, Massey and Denton (1993) argued that legalized segregation began in force in 1910. When redlining became a common practice, there is little doubt it was practiced in Tuscaloosa and Joplin, but that part of history is lost, as redlining maps for smaller cities are no longer in existence (personal correspondence, National Archives).

Desegregation

After the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, Joplin Junior College was ordered to desegregate (Bogle 1991). The history of sundown towns and the inability of residents to recognize their role in shaping demographics in majority-White areas is evident in Joplin. According to Bogle (1991), a school leader and an African American, Cecil Floyd, stated this about the region’s African American population: “We have a different type of colored persons than we had in the big cities. We don’t have that type of people . . . we have a good type of Black people” (p. 438). Additionally, Bogle wrote, “The white community in Joplin has misinterpreted the black experience in the city. Passiveness has been equated with approval” (p. 439). The claim that there was “no problem” was based on the inability to see how expecting African Americans to be more passive was an insidious mechanism of White supremacy and reinforced expectations for African Americans to be passive. Allport (1979) contended that the assertion that “there is no problem here” does not mean that areas of the country that did not experience widely publicized racial violence and tension are free from racial prejudice. Instead, Allport argued, this assertion mimics the racial and class blindness of our society. Indeed, the experiences of “peaceful” desegregation and the racial ideology that African Americans are somehow “different” in Joplin compared with other places provides a narrative to which many of my participants subscribed. The idea that there is “nothing to see here” informs current White residents’ understandings of the racial hierarchy or lack thereof (outlined below).

My assertion that context is important to understand inequalities is evident when comparing Joplin and Tuscaloosa. Tuscaloosa’s history of race relations is different from Joplin’s. Attempts at integration in Alabama took more than a decade. Lieb (1995) documented how angry Whites protested the admission of the first African American student, Autherine Lucy, to the University of Alabama in 1956. Lucy was quickly expelled for her “protection” (Mokrzycki 2012). The University of Alabama was not officially desegregated until 1963.

I choose to highlight desegregation here because it is a historical moment and offers points of comparison and contrast with Joplin. Although the story of Joplin is one of race elision vis-à-vis the violent removal of people of color, sundown towns and the assertion that there is “nothing to see here,” the story of Tuscaloosa is one of blatant racial hostility and violence. I have presented both histories to demonstrate that race and class matter in Joplin as in Tuscaloosa but that they matter in different ways. Moreover, this historical information frames my findings for two reasons. First, Whites in Joplin, because of the more homogeneous make-up of the town, are able to articulate colorblind racism and that Joplin is somehow “unique.” I argue that this is because Joplin was a sundown town. Second, because Tuscaloosa is more heterogeneous and has historically had more mixed demographics in terms of race and class, the government responded to Tuscaloosa in colorblind and class-blind ways, failing to take the neediest into full account and failing to disperse adequate funds (similar to Hurricane Katrina). This shows how different historical institutional forces create different perspectives in the aftermaths of the tornados (Molotch et al. 2000).

Come Together? Only for Some: Standpoints and the “Leveling Effect”

It is well documented in the literature that crisis creates an opportunity for neighborhoods, regions, or an entire country to come together in solidarity (see Eyerman 2015). In other disaster scholarship, this tendency to come together has been conceptualized as an altruistic community (Barton 1969) and therapeutic community (Kreps 1984). Indeed, my participants spoke of a leveling effect that caused them to break down in tears and show much emotion when recalling how their city and neighbors responded. However, for many, those feelings of solidarity and liminality did not last. Thus, the idea of a therapeutic or altruistic community may not last for people who are poor, African American, or marginalized in other ways. In both Joplin and Tuscaloosa, the overwhelming majority of participants felt as if the local, state, and federal government did a great job of providing relief in the immediate aftermath (though not all). They also narrated feelings of sameness, or as I call it, “a leveling effect.” Indeed, there was much evidence of cooperation among citizens, neighbors, emergency personnel, and government officials. Tom Gallaher, a young White man whom I interviewed with his fiancée, Lindsey, told me,

[The response was] more than adequate. Like I said, as soon as being set up with donations and you could just go in and get what you need and there were people driving around handing out food to people who were trying to clean up their rubble . . . yeah it was great. I think they did a tremendous job. . . . It was just one goal . . . and that was to get everyone okay, and that was it. I don’t think there was a gender bias or racial bias, or anything like that . . . it seemed like it was one brotherhood. (White, working class, May 2013, Joplin)

Tom represents what the majority of my middle- and working-class White participants described about people coming together in the immediate aftermath. This was indeed the dominant response from White respondents: that there was a leveling effect. A middle-class White woman in Joplin who owned her own business had a similar view. While having coffee at chain coffee and bagel shop, Kathy Sharpe told me,

It had an effect of ameliorating social class. It put everybody on a level playing field, and in a community this size, everybody became everybody’s brother, so there was a sense of, you knew people that had more money and people that had less money, but everyone was in it together, and so there was a really refreshing new sense of camaraderie and community. (White, middle class, June 2014, Joplin)

However, this leveling effect was not articulated by all of my participants in the same way.

The idea that marginalized groups have a special sight to see things in ways the dominant group cannot, appears in two ways in my data. First, my African American respondents recognized that the leveling would not last, and second, they described the leveling effect in almost utopian terms. For example, Hilda Salk was reflexive when she talked about the leveling effect. She recalled what she told the volunteers who helped her:

Living in Tuscaloosa all our lives, I am like, “This is good right now. But once all the tornado [help] cease, all this love and affection that we’ve been getting, it’s going to stop. It’s going to go back—we will be separated [again].” (African American, retired working class, October 2014, Tuscaloosa)

Hilda clearly understood that things would go back to being separate and the leveling effect would not last, a feeling my White respondents did not articulate. In a different way, an African American man in Tuscaloosa was incredulous about the leveling effect immediately after the tornado. Danny Rockbury said,

I mean, everybody, I mean, you would be surprised. Everybody was the same for one time. Everybody was the same. I mean, that day everybody was the same. I mean, I saw what God wanted us to be, not caring about who it is, just caring about what we need to do. I’m telling you, I’ve never seen that, and I told folks, I said “You better enjoy this.” (African American, middle class, September 2014, Tuscaloosa, emphasis added)

Danny hinted that things would eventually go back to normal. Similarly, Theresa Richards, a working-class African American woman in Joplin told me,

There was no Black, there was no White, there was no brown, no red, no yellow; it was just us. It didn’t matter. It’s just, we are one. And that’s what it felt like. I don’t remember ever feeling anything like that. (African American, working class, July 2014, Joplin, emphasis added)

Both Danny and Theresa compared the leveling effect to something almost otherworldly and utopian. It is interesting to note that White respondents did not present the leveling effect in such awestruck terms. Although they did narrate solidarity, it seemed as if the feelings of community were to be expected.

African American respondents repudiate the claim that feelings of solidarity and community or the leveling effect lasted in the long term. This finding is remarkably consistent despite gender and class differences among the African Americans I interviewed. Hudley and Feldon (2006) and Herring (2006) also found that African Americans and Whites had different perceptions of disaster relief and recovery after Hurricane Katrina. Moreover, after the help poured in, some African Americans told me that even the rules of the game changed. Crystal Long, an African American woman in Tuscaloosa, was living in a hotel room in 2013. When I asked her about the help she received from the city and nonprofit organizations, she told me,

I stayed in a hotel for, we stayed in that hotel, for the whole summer . . . and that’s when things [got] harder here, as far as help-wise. They helped for you know, for a little while, but then the rules changed you know and I am still living in a hotel room. The help stopped, the attitudes changed and they made it harder for us. They changed the rules as far as like government housing. They changed the rules for emergency housing. (African American, homeless, August 2013, Tuscaloosa)

Crystal was speaking to two issues. She told me that rules of getting services changed for poor African Americans. Second, for a while, there was an outpouring of help, but the help stopped. This is not a comment I heard from practically any of the White participants.

In sum, although some were thrilled at the community coming together in solidarity, for others, the solidarity and feelings of sameness quickly disintegrated into feelings of bitterness, confusion, depression, and anger. Interviews with people of color are important in this case to understand that not everyone felt that sense of community, commonality, and goodwill. The findings in this section show how race operates similarly in both Joplin and Tuscaloosa.

Regional Differences: Colorblind Racism and Explanations for Recovery

Many White participants in Joplin had a very interesting view of Tuscaloosa. Upon learning that I was comparing Joplin’s and Tuscaloosa’s recovery, they would use coded phrases to describe Tuscaloosa residents. This did not occur nearly as often in Tuscaloosa. This is related to the information I presented about the ideology that “there is no problem here” or “Joplin has a different kind of Black people.” Many respondents credited Joplin’s recovery to “midwestern work ethic” or the idea that “we didn’t wait on handouts.” The very idea of midwestern values or a midwestern work ethic is a racialized way of viewing the world. It implies that the mostly White residents of the rural Midwest have the ability, wherewithal, and moral fortitude to do things better than people in other parts of the country.

During one of my first interviews in Joplin, a middle-class White man in his 40s told me that the Tuscaloosa aftermath was a “cluster-fuck.” Helen Douglas, a White middle-class leader in Joplin, told me,

Here’s the real big thing [in comparison to Tuscaloosa and New Orleans]. The night I was driving around and you can’t see diddly squat, but there were people helping each other do whatever. They weren’t waiting. I mean, a lot of times we stop and go “Are you guys OK? What do you need?” “We’re fine, we’re helping each other.” That’s what the difference is, and I think it’s that rural Midwest being about “We just take care of ourselves.” And we take care of each other. (White, middle class, July 2014, Joplin, emphasis added)

Midwestern and often libertarian “values” framed the ways in which Joplin residents saw themselves in comparison to Tuscaloosa and often New Orleans. This regional and largely political explanation places the blame on the individual and does not consider institutionalized racism. That is, Joplin’s history as a blue-collar, conservative town with a very small non-White population allows residents there to understand themselves and others in colorblind racist ways (Bonilla-Silva 2010). Because racial confrontation or even interaction is not a daily reality for them, they are able to believe that Joplin’s people of color are somehow a different stock of African Americans from those in Tuscaloosa, which simultaneously elides structural racism in Tuscaloosa and erases any racial disparities in Joplin. Chamlee-Wright and Storr (2011) found a similar narrative construction in a mostly White working-class parish affected by Katrina, though Chamlee-Wright and Storr saw such narratives as a form of social capital. I find, however, that though such ideologies may serve as capital, they also reinforce racist views, albeit in implicit and colorblind ways.

Residents in Tuscaloosa had a different view of their recovery in juxtaposition to Joplin’s. They felt as if they were forgotten about because of the Joplin tornado, and then the news of the death of Osama bin Laden shortly thereafter eclipsed their tragedy. Many community leaders also thought that Joplin got more money because Missouri is a swing state, and the 2012 elections were on the close horizon. Here we see political and regional differences working in a different way that is not necessarily based on individual colorblind racism but the political climate in 2011. That is, Missouri is a swing state (even though Joplin is very conservative); conversely, although Tuscaloosa is a Democratic college town, the state of Alabama is solidly Republican.

Although it is likely true that the election of the 2012 had something to do with why Joplin received more federal funds than Tuscaloosa, I suggest that something much more insidious occurred. For example, sociologists Erin York Cornwell and Alex Currit (2016) showed that during emergencies, there is a huge disparity in who receives help from bystanders. Cornwell and Currit analyzed data from the National Emergency Management Information System and found that Whites were twice as likely to receive help compared with African American patients before an ambulance arrived. Although I cannot speak to why Joplin got more federal money than Tuscaloosa, consider the lengthy comments of Sierra, a middle-class African American woman, on comparing Joplin and Tuscaloosa:

During the interview, Sierra asks herself a startling question and then answers, “That really brings it glaringly obvious, doesn’t it?” Sierra is referring to the fact that Tuscaloosa and New Orleans are composed of far more people of color. She recognized that perhaps the reason Joplin received such an outpouring of volunteers and state and federal relief is because it is perhaps easier to galvanize funds when “White” communities are affected. Tuscaloosa received $10.1 million after their tornado, and Joplin received more than $150 million (Associated Press 2016). So although the role of each state in the election cycle might have influence how much relief the states received, it seems likely that disparities in willingness to help the racial other also played a part (McKinzie 2017a).

Tuscaloosa residents did not point to a particular reason, such as midwestern values, for recovery or lack thereof. Instead, they directed their criticisms more toward the government. Colorblind racism is useful to explain how racism operates in some contexts but not in others. When I would tell my Tuscaloosa participants that some Joplin residents felt as if Joplin’s recovery was based on midwestern values and that they weren’t waiting on a handout (in comparison with Tuscaloosa), my Tuscaloosa participants found this to be perplexing. Moreover, although colorblind racism was prevalent in my interviews with White Joplin residents, many people of color (similar to Sierra) were far more critical and did not rely on coded statements to explain recovery. In sum, colorblind racism is useful to explain individualized standpoints in Joplin and federal government response in Tuscaloosa (see also Forman and Lewis 2006; Lieberman 2006; Sweeney 2006; Young 2006). These findings show how colorblind racism operates in different ways.

Regional Similarities: The Importance of Class

In this section I examine how social class frames recovery. My interpretation of my findings is that social class frames gender and racial inequality in the context of long-term recovery. Other scholars have also pointed to the importance of understanding social class when examining inequalities. Julie Bettie (2000) argued for an analysis of class that can grapple with how social class and race create each other. This includes marginalized perspectives and privileged perspectives. In short, drawing from scholarship that recognizes how social class frames gender and race does not mean that I maintain social class is always the most important social category. Instead, my argument is that in the context of long-term recovery in both Joplin and Tuscaloosa, social class racializes and genders recovery in particular ways. That is, class influences perceptions of recovery, but how class matters cannot be understood without taking race and gender into account.

Class Frames Poor Whites’ Perspectives

Krista Robles lived in a hotel room after a harrowing experience due to the tornado. Krista narrated the situation of living in poverty and desolation after the tornado:

I had, a billboard, it’s a sign that the, some people own, it was a sign, and pieces of that had blown off. And it was actually like a tarpaulin, like a tarp it had the covering on it, well we got some guy folks out there to get the tree off my roof and uh, I didn’t stay there, I left there and stayed gone for like a month. I had the water and power cut back off. Of course it cost me, after like a month, I got up enough nerve and we went out there. They [the guy folks] come over there and they tried to tarp it, but it [water] was still leaking down my walls, and they got that tarpaulin and pulled it and got up there and covered my roof with that tarp. Well I was able to get back in my bedroom and stuff. Uh, but, still when it rained, um, I don’t know how it was getting down in the walls but it ruined the electrical plugs. But that tarp saved me. I got to stay there but uh, like I said, no hot water, the kitchen sink had rotted. I had two tubs, like on my front porch, and I had a hose pipe. That’s how I washed my dishes. On the front porch, for a year. Winter, summer, all winter, I was out there washing my dishes. And uh, cooking on a, like a two eye, and a microwave. Couldn’t plug nothing up because it would throw the breakers. We didn’t have no heat, no central heat. No air, nothing. Uh, we was using a fire place when we had wood. And then staying in, I was staying in one room with an electric heater. When I couldn’t build a fire, I was staying in one room because of no heat. You couldn’t move around because it was freezing. (White, homeless, September 2014, Tuscaloosa)

Krista left the house because it was freezing, but her dog was not with her. While she was gone, her trailer burned to the ground and killed her dog. Krista pointed to social class as the reason for difficulty in recovering:

As far as like rich or poor, it affecting, I think it just, it’s all the same, just when it hit, it hit rich or poor, Black or White, it don’t see no dollar signs or colors. It just the people that’s poor people like me, we had to depend on FEMA or churches or something. But yeah, it took us a while. It affected us a little different because we are slower to get on our feet. (September 2014, Tuscaloosa)

Krista’s story is also illustrative of how class frames gender. Krista told me during our interview that she had was forced to make a “choiceless” decision and live with her battering boyfriend for years prior to the tornado (see Aretxaga 1997). She bought the trailer to have a place of her own and to leave him, only to have the storm take that away from her. To give another example, Steve Smith, an illiterate White man in Tuscaloosa, understands how recovery is unfair for those in poverty. He said to me,

But I know if it hadn’t been for the organization that helped me, see the city was going to come in here and tear down these houses. . . . [They] got money to burn, and nothing being done about it, [it’s] their [individual people’s] problem. They just messed with low class people because they [low class people] can’t afford to fix this, can’t live without going through somebody [an organization] to fix it. (White, in poverty, October 2014, Tuscaloosa)

Clearly, Krista and Steve have a different view because they understand that the poor got the short of the end the stick on the basis of their experiences of being in abject poverty. However, they fail to articulate differences in recovery on the basis of race, and Steve fails to articulate gender differences. In juxtaposition with many of my Joplin residents though, they do not rely on coded phrases.

Class Frames African Americans’ Perspectives

Class also framed how people of color perceived government response and long-term recovery. A few my participants in both locations who were older middle-class African American men subscribed to neoliberal interpretations of inequality. This has a long history in the African American community, particularly among African American men who are wealthy or middle class (from Booker T. Washington to current examples such as Herman Cain and Ben Carson). Gabriel Tomlinson told me this when I asked how the city responded and if recovery was equal:

There are many Blacks that were not out there [affected], but their voices are out there. [I say,] “Guys, we have a responsibility to take care of ourselves. The slave mentality has to end. We know that we need an education, and in America, it’s free. Okay? But folks shed blood for us to go vote, [you] won’t go vote.” So there are some issues that’s within us that we have to deal with. . . . It’s much easier to go get on welfare. (African American, middle class, October 2014, Tuscaloosa)

Many older, middle-class African American men subscribed to this same ideology, that is, that the African American community needs to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” which shows how class and gender can frame African American perspectives (indeed, 13 percent of African American men who voted in the 2016 presidential election voted for Donald Trump). Gabriel offers interpretations of recovery that seem to be influenced by his class position. Indeed, Bonilla-Silva (2010) contended that colorblind racism indirectly affects people of color, and some tend to endorse the same views as Whites. However, examining differing perspectives brings nuance to colorblind racism, because the willingness to endorse pathological colorblind racism varies on the basis of context, gender, and class.

As is evident in Krista’s story, disaster recovery is gendered. However, saying that disaster differentially affects men and women falls short of the mark. What I mean is that gender differences in recovery were also framed by race and class and cannot be understood without taking race and class into account. Poor, working-class, and middle-class African American women had different views on recovery than some of their male counterparts (sometimes even their own husbands). Tiffany Withers, who considers herself lower middle class, told me this,

I went to temporary emergency services, and this was maybe I’d say a month after the storm, and I had difficulty getting help there. I guess because maybe I didn’t look a certain way [long pause]. And so I didn’t look like I was having a hard time. I’m like, I really need some help. Like it was little things like that that really had bothered me, because I really needed the help. (African American, lower middle class, October 2014, Tuscaloosa)

Another middle-class African American woman from Tuscaloosa, Taylor Frank, told me that she and her husband put on “work” clothes to go through her damaged house. National Guardsmen asked her what she was doing in that neighborhood. She said to him, “I live here.” These women’s experiences suggest that middle-class African American women have to find a balance between looking middle class enough to be in certain areas or looking poor enough to receive assistance. In Joplin, a middle-class African American woman, Sierra, tiredly told me:

I mean, it happens—that usually happens when a disaster hits, like 9/11, everyone was “Kumbayah, we love everybody.” [They] wave[d] the flag “Americans, woohoo, everybody comes together.” [And then] three months later, get back to your separate ways. Here, [they] did the same thing. (African American, middle class, July 2014, Joplin)

Overall, African American women (regardless of class) articulated the most critical understandings of relief and recovery. Carissa Foster, an African American woman in Joplin, told me this:

I’m still struggling. That’s why I went to school. I was struggling before, said “I might as well struggle.” You look at it and you’re like, okay, “I was struggling before the tornado.” I’m not going to sit here and say I wasn’t, but to have to restart over, people are going to only help so much. This all happened during the summer. They didn’t come around during the winter. I mean, I just literally—the first winter afterwards, probably had two pair of jeans to wear. Who was going to buy my clothes? They’re like well, “You got money from FEMA.” I got so sick of hearing that. That was the big thing I got sick of hearing. “Well, you got money from FEMA.” So did fucking Joplin. (African American, working poor, June 2014, Joplin)

Carissa went on to tell me that she is sure people were treated differently in recovery on the basis of race. “I mean, how many people after the tornado on TV did you see [who were] Black? They’re fucking high” [if they think race didn’t play a role] (June 2014, Joplin). In sum, African American women pointed out racial differences in relief and recovery regardless of location and social class.

Class Frames Educated Whites’ Perspectives in Tuscaloosa

Finally, many educated and middle- to upper-class Whites in Tuscaloosa were quite critical of recovery because of how it perpetuated racial inequality. The history of civil rights in the area allowed many participants to recognize that recovery was racialized and classed. Hence, geographic location, class, and education are vital to understanding differing perceptions. Furthermore, because the University of Alabama is in Tuscaloosa, many middle-class Whites with whom I spoke were very liberal or progressive in their outlooks. Sarah Washington, a White middle-class woman in Tuscaloosa, thinks the city missed its opportunity. She said to me,

And how things were redistricted and rezoned. Everybody was out to make a buck with the—with the construction, and so now what do we have? We have an overabundance of what’s considered student housing –where’s a working class person going to live? And so our community got dispersed. I think—and I’m going to cry thinking about this. They missed that opportunity, they pushed them out. They pushed them out [crying]. (White, middle class, September 2014, Tuscaloosa)

Sarah’s perspective directly relates to many middle-class Whites in Tuscaloosa who clearly understanding the racialized dynamics of the storm and do not use colorblind racism in the context of long-term recovery: for many Tuscaloosa residents, racial inequality has been and is on full display. In sum, perceptions of recovery differed on the basis of intersecting social locations as well as geographic location. This variation among groups shows that homogenizing tendencies are dangerous and do not do justice to particular perspectives. In this section, I show how class frames race and gender in ways that cannot be understood without taking an intersectional view.