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Hurricane Katrina washed away more than just homes and buildings, a university panel said Tuesday: It also exposed race and class inequities and news media bias toward blacks. The tragic storm and its aftermath ripped the scab from America's festering wound of race and poverty and exposed the myth that the nation is a classless society.

Without assigning blame, five panelists told a standing-room-only crowd in the University of Utah Union Theatre that Katrina put a spotlight on the nation's poor, its power structure, racism and its resulting social injustice.

Wilfred Samuels, associate professor of English and director of African-American and ethnic studies programs at the U., recalled that after 9/11, many people in Utah and across the nation put signs in homes and cars that declared America "one nation under God" and "God bless America."

There were no such signs after Katrina, Samuels said. "What I began to hear were people lamenting that African-Americans were seeking a handout."

On the panel with Samuels were Karen Johnson and William Smith, assistant professors of education, culture and society; Irene Ota, diversity coordinator in the U. College of Social Work; and Ron Stallworth, a sergeant with the Utah Department of Public Safety and chairman of the Utah Black Advisory Council.

Johnson, who grew up in Louisiana, said residential segregation found in rural and urban America is evidence of the connection between race and class. Describing the New Orleans' landscape, she pointed to areas that are predominately Anglo and others that are middle class for blacks and whites. The city's poorest residents, primarily black, lived in low-lying areas where housing is less expensive.

The poor often are invisible until Americans are forced to recognize them, said Ota, zeroing in on issues that unfolded after the hurricane.

First, the displaced people were called refugees even though Americans rarely, if ever, are labeled refugees in their own country. Within a week, they were known as evacuees, another label that suggested they were less than citizens, Ota said. When Katrina put a spotlight on New Orleans' poor, who are now homeless, Americans made "uncomfortable" by the images began asking: Why are these people in this position?

On talk radio, in newspaper commentary and in letters to the editor, people opined that "these people" deserved what they got because they depended on welfare and "years of waiting on the government," Ota said. "There wasn't a lot of talk about stories of survival - 24 people huddled in a compact car so that no one was left behind."

Smith said the news media often play into racial stereotypes by focusing on black males as criminal predators, anti-intellectuals and student athletes. Yet, when whites are confronted with their reliance on these "racial primes," as Smith called them, most seem surprised.

For example, Smith showed his students a KUED-produced documentary about the prejudices and racism faced by Utah blacks. He said his white students were surprised that blacks had experienced racial prejudice in Utah.

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff contributed to the atmosphere of fear by stating in a radio interview that "several dozen" of the individuals evacuated to Utah from the Gulf Coast were "convicted murderers."

Shurtleff later said that he got bad information from the Utah Department of Public Safety.

Yet, there has been no call for background checks on other people who move to Utah, and recent news reports have detailed there are 1,900 sexual predators in Utah, most of them white, who cannot be accounted for, Smith said. "But people here are suspicious about the African-Americans," Smith said.

Stallworth, a 32-year police officer, offered personal testimony about working with displaced Gulf Coast residents who he said were invited to Utah by Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. on behalf of Utah's citizens.

Referring to the Gulf Coast residents as "guests," Stallworth said many arrived with nothing and those with any possessions at all carried them in a plastic grocery bag.

"When she stepped off the plane, one woman kept repeating 'dry land, dry land,' ” Stallworth said, adding that some had been in floodwaters for more than a week - with no food or water. "They were so grateful," he said.

Assisting the evacuees has been an experience Stallworth said he will never forget. He pledged to do whatever he can to help them make their way “until we tackle the issues of race and class,” he said.