I Am Genuinely Puzzled

Did the poor refuse to leave New Orleans or did they lack the means? I honestly don't know the answer, but earlier in the week, the consensus seemed to be that they stayed on purpose (see, for example, this post). But now, more and more people are saying they couldn't leave.

Novelist Anne Rice in this morning's NYT:

Thousands didn't leave New Orleans because they couldn't leave. They didn't have the money. They didn't have the vehicles. They didn't have any place to go. They are the poor, black and white, who dwell in any city in great numbers; and they did what they felt they could do - they huddled together in the strongest houses they could find.

David Brooks implies the same thing: "Leaving the poor in New Orleans was the moral equivalent of leaving the injured on the battlefield." NYT Link.

Here's how I see this going: Fact finders will discover that the majority of residents who didn't get out chose to stay. As that becomes evident, the same writers who said they couldn't leave will switch gears to a non-judgmental relativism: "Well, it doesn't really matter. We still failed them." They will be partly right. The relevant principle will be what jurists call "comparative negligence." The injured party's own negligence doesn't excuse the defendant (here, FEMA), but it reduces the defendant's percentage of total culpability.