In the wake of Hurricane Katrina: delivering crisis mental health services to host communities

Perhaps, the one lesson we as mental health practitioners could learn from this comes from W. E. B. Dubois (1996) who asserted in 1903, over a century ago in his treatise on the souls of Black folk, "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line-the relation of the darker to the lighter races . . . in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea" (p. 10). Sadly, the lesson learned from all indications, based on federal government's response to the Gulf Coast disaster and the media, government officials, and mental health professions' shyness in acknowledging or lack of commentary on the fact that the majority of the evacuees of Katrina were destitute Black individuals- is that the color line, integrated with race and class, is still a problem over a century later.