Getting Past Katrina By Juan Williams

The essay "Getting Past Katrina" by Juan Williams focuses on the increasing poverty of

population in the country and discusses the possible ways of escaping it. The author talks

mostly about African-Americans whose poverty rate has increased since the beginning of

this century.

The thesis sentence of the essay states that the shock of Hurricane Katrina awoke many

of the Americans to the reality that poverty persists even after implementing different

social reform programs.

The problem is that the majority of people remain poor because they don't know how to

help themselves escape poverty. They are discouraged from doing better in life as they

rely too much on government aids and welfare programs that do not give solution how to

fight this poverty. Also, the author blames the racial and political arguments between the

right and the left that failed to help them solve this core problem.

The author supports the main idea with shocking statistics: the number of Americans in

poverty is 12.6 percent overall, the number of nation's children in poverty is close to 18

percent , the poverty rate of New Orleans blacks is 35 percent. The other examples that

prove the real facts are that a Pew Research Center poll found that two-third of black

Americans and three quarters of white Americans believe that too many poor people are

overly dependent on government aid.

He turns to protect and to be on the side of black poor Americans who were depicted in

Hurricane Katrina aftermath on TV as criminals, rapists and looters - those claims turned

out