Like many (Black) Americans, I can recall exactly where I was on the day that Hurricane Katrina made landfall: August 29th, 2005. Having only just graduated from Oberlin College months before, and equipped with all the critical thinking skills, intellectual curiosity, and righteous indignation a good liberal arts education can instill, I wanted to get outside of the academe and do something that would have tangible and liberatory effects for the lives of ordinary folks struggling to change the world around them. Sure this was a lofty goal, but I wholeheartedly believed in Oberlin’s creed: “Think one person can change the world?... So do we!”
Wanting to take full advantage of my youth, as well as newfound opportunities to travel, and build coalitions with other groups fighting for social justice, I took an internship in Charles Mix county, South Dakota in the Yankton Sioux reservation. I arrived the farthest west I had ever been on the evening of August 27th 2005. I was just making myself at home in the women’s domestic violence shelter (where I was to perform half of my internship duties) when I was confronted by the suffering and willful neglect of the people of the Gulf Coast. I was astonished and could not believe that no one had prepared any plans to evacuate the elderly, the sick, children, and the poor people of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. I was paralyzed by the thought that any of those (Black) people waiting on rooftops and wading through chest-high waters could have been my familiars. I wanted to do something to help, but I didn’t know what. I had just arrived in South Dakota, was making a minimal salary, and wanted to experience what the Great Plains had to offer. No longer an idealistic student, but now an “independent adult” with no money and very few (institutional) resources, I decided I’d stay where I was.
On the one-year anniversary of Katrina’s landfall, I was beginning life anew in Durham, North Carolina. As a graduate student in Cultural Anthropology at Duke, I was learning more and more about the practical and theoretical uses of ethnography. As I understand it, ethnography – writing culture – is an act of synthesis wherein the author draws together social science literatures, participant observation, interviews, media representations, and personal experience. At best, an ethnography is a sort of history of the contemporary moment in which different social actors get to tell their stories. Because ethnographies tend to privilege attention to detail, everyday life, and social relationships as they evolve over time, I believe that they are best suited to demystifying the complexities of economic and social change, political upheaval, and even so-called “natural” disasters. I would like to humbly offer these tools in response to the ongoing challenges posed by Katrina. It is my aim to collaborate with residents of New Orleans, activists, artists, migrants, and workers in order to connect people to each other and to much-needed resources, as well as to advance the cause of social justice; I see the production of an ethnography about the changing social conditions in New Orleans as one (small) contribution towards that larger goal.
Wanting to take full advantage of my youth, as well as newfound opportunities to travel, and build coalitions with other groups fighting for social justice, I took an internship in Charles Mix county, South Dakota in the Yankton Sioux reservation. I arrived the farthest west I had ever been on the evening of August 27th 2005. I was just making myself at home in the women’s domestic violence shelter (where I was to perform half of my internship duties) when I was confronted by the suffering and willful neglect of the people of the Gulf Coast. I was astonished and could not believe that no one had prepared any plans to evacuate the elderly, the sick, children, and the poor people of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. I was paralyzed by the thought that any of those (Black) people waiting on rooftops and wading through chest-high waters could have been my familiars. I wanted to do something to help, but I didn’t know what. I had just arrived in South Dakota, was making a minimal salary, and wanted to experience what the Great Plains had to offer. No longer an idealistic student, but now an “independent adult” with no money and very few (institutional) resources, I decided I’d stay where I was.
On the one-year anniversary of Katrina’s landfall, I was beginning life anew in Durham, North Carolina. As a graduate student in Cultural Anthropology at Duke, I was learning more and more about the practical and theoretical uses of ethnography. As I understand it, ethnography – writing culture – is an act of synthesis wherein the author draws together social science literatures, participant observation, interviews, media representations, and personal experience. At best, an ethnography is a sort of history of the contemporary moment in which different social actors get to tell their stories. Because ethnographies tend to privilege attention to detail, everyday life, and social relationships as they evolve over time, I believe that they are best suited to demystifying the complexities of economic and social change, political upheaval, and even so-called “natural” disasters. I would like to humbly offer these tools in response to the ongoing challenges posed by Katrina. It is my aim to collaborate with residents of New Orleans, activists, artists, migrants, and workers in order to connect people to each other and to much-needed resources, as well as to advance the cause of social justice; I see the production of an ethnography about the changing social conditions in New Orleans as one (small) contribution towards that larger goal.
Ronni Armstead
