UPDATE: Two Americas

Yesterday I posted the outstanding essay by John Edwards about how poverty in America played into the human tragedy in New Orleans.  Today - as if to illustrate the reality of Two Americas - the New York Times has a great story about how two families from New Orleans have coped with the disaster: one white and middle class, the other black and poor.

Just as it ripped through levees to send water pouring through New Orleans, the storm cleaved a harsh chasm among the region's refugees, providing a stark portrait of the vast divide between America's haves and have-nots.

[...] Nearly one in four of New Orleans' 445,000 residents live in poverty, many of them in neighborhoods like the one where the Jackson-Brown clan huddled in a $350-a-month two-bedroom apartment across from a dilapidated and dangerous housing project; 69 percent of the city is black, and the median household income is $31,369. To the west in Metairie, where Ellen DeGeneres grew up, the median income is $41,265, just below the national average, 87 percent of the 145,000 residents are white, and fewer than 1 in 10 are poor.

More coverage of the Two Americas today in the German press by taz and Sueddeutsche.