Trump has also railed on Puerto Ricans for “wanting everything to be done for them” and failing to contribute more to the relief efforts. He has called the islands’ leadership “poor” and “opportunistic” and blamed Puerto Ricans for the financial crisis that’s now confounding the island’s recovery. Virgin Islands are from mainland America. Throughout the disaster relief effort, President Trump’s rhetoric has highlighted just how different Puerto Rico and the U.S. It’s predictable, then, that the president worked diligently to help Texas and Florida – states that supported him in 2016 – while neglecting Caribbean residents, who cannot vote in a presidential election.īut I would contend that the differential post-hurricane treatment transcends these political disadvantages and reflects racial bias. Facing historic disapproval ratings, President Trump’s agenda has also narrowed toward rallying his base. Virgin Islands don’t have representatives defending their interests in Congress. territories were inevitably facing an uphill disaster recovery process because – unlike Texas and Florida – Puerto Rico and the U.S. There are likely other explanations for why America’s Caribbean citizens are seeing such disparate post-storm treatment. Virgin Islands, where 98 percent of the population identifies as black or of African ancestry, were also battered by both Hurricanes Irma and Maria, leaving residents “ in survival mode.” The Trump administration has also largely ignored their suffering. Signs of racial bias in the current federal relief efforts go beyond Puerto Rico. A 2007 study performed by researchers at Stanford and UCLA found that Americans are less willing to support extensive taxpayer-funded disaster relief when the victim population is not white.
#TRUMP MOCKS PUERTO RICO SKIN#
There is empirical evidence that skin color impacts federal assistance. Most recently, Trump even threatened to withdraw federal aid from Puerto Rico altogether, even though some communities have yet to see a penny. Likewise, while the president vowed to stand with Texas and Florida “every single day” to help them “restore, recover and rebuild,” he seemed to mock Puerto Ricans’ plight at an Oct. In Puerto Rico, on the other hand, President Trump arrived to survey the wreckage two weeks after Maria struck.
In Texas and Florida, the president responded swiftly, visiting these southern states in a matter of days. So in a place like Puerto Rico, where nearly 99 percent of the population is Latino, discriminatory decision-making can hurt the community’s capacity to recover. Environmental disasters lay bare existing inequalities like prejudice and poverty. policy, racial bias may explain these disparate relief efforts, at least in part. Others have contrasted it with the all-hands-on-deck support seen by Harvey and Irma victims in Texas and Florida.īased on my experience researching equity and inclusion in U.S. military’s 2005 Hurricane Katrina relief operation – have criticized the Trump administration’s Puerto Rico storm response.
0 kommentar(er)
