University of Connecticut professor says racism is responsible for natural

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In a lecture at Colgate University, UConn professor Andy Horowitz made the case that natural disasters are actually just racism and racist policies.

No, really!

‘Disasters are not unpredictable attacks or acts of God that arrive without precedent,’ Horowitz said. ‘Their causes and consequences reach across much longer periods of time and space than we commonly imagined.’

For example, he says the disaster of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina started in 1915 when New Orleans with the installation of the industrial canal flood wall, near the Lower Ninth Ward, which created the flood-prone areas of the city that affected mostly African American residents.

Low-income housing and other policy decisions further exacerbated the effects of the disaster.

‘We call it the climate crisis, but truly, the crisis we face is one of democracy,’ Horowitz said.

It’s interesting that New Orleans has largely been governed by Democrats since 1915.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with looking at how policies affect people during a natural disaster, but to suggest there wouldn’t be natural disasters if we had better policies is utterly ridiculous.

(Not to mention the bad optics coming on the heel of Hurricane Helene.)

Unfortunately, Horowitz’s ridiculous ideas were pushed down on young students at the university.

First-year Carolina Hommen found Horowitz’s thoughts on the misnomer of ‘natural disaster’ enlightening.

‘His point that there’s ‘no such thing as a natural disaster’ really stood out to me. It’s about context,’ Hommen said. ‘It’s not just about the destruction of Katrina. Policies that were supposed to help ended up reinforcing inequality.’