Hurricane Katrina was one of the worst natural disasters that occurred in the United States history. This hurricane caused major damage to city infrastructure, residents homes and left many people homeless, starving, and without water because of this storm. The lack of leadership willing to assume responsibility and take control of this situation was purely embarrassing. Officials ranking from New Orleans mayor, all of the way up to president bush were simply finger pointing and would not accept responsibility and accountability of what happened. In my essay, I will be taking a look at how biases from government individuals could have impeded rather than supported efforts of survivors based on their perceptions of their jurisdictions and
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Nagin called for a last minute voluntary evacuation of New Orleans, even though there were earlier warnings on the severity of the hurricane. He also made several public statements advising the people if they did not evacuate, “we will take care of you.” (Brinkley 2009). Mayor Nagin blamed the delayed reaction of the evacuation on local businesses failing to shut down and lack of state and federal assistance. He also should not take accountability or responsibility for his failure to assist people in the Superdome and the convention center. He blamed these on situational factors and other people. The actor-observer bias shown here is that the media blames mayor Nagin for the failure of people to evacuate, but Nagin blames the government for the lack of a timely rescue effort from federal assistance programs. If Mayor Nagin made an earlier attempt for mandatory evacuation and had not made promises to the citizens that they would be taken care of, then perhaps the dangerous rescues and the casualties of the remaining citizens of New Orleans would have been less …show more content…
More often than not public officials are tuned into scapegoats and can be fired or forced to resign. Sometimes this is unfair because there may be circumstances beyond the actors control at play. Another problem is that observers want to blamed their leaders, but fail to take responsibility and accountability for their own failures. For example, the residents of New Orleans blamed officials when they were not rescued, but failed to evacuate in the first place. Instead of recognizing that they made the choice not to evacuate, they played the blame game and blamed it on mayor Nagin’s promise that he would take care of them. The final problem is that bias between the actor and observers makes it harder to diagnose the initial cause of the problems. If a more objective analysis of the problems by both actors and observers happened, then there would more likely of been a quicker solution to many of the problems that have
Nagin called for a last minute voluntary evacuation of New Orleans, even though there were earlier warnings on the severity of the hurricane. He also made several public statements advising the people if they did not evacuate, “we will take care of you.” (Brinkley 2009). Mayor Nagin blamed the delayed reaction of the evacuation on local businesses failing to shut down and lack of state and federal assistance. He also should not take accountability or responsibility for his failure to assist people in the Superdome and the convention center. He blamed these on situational factors and other people. The actor-observer bias shown here is that the media blames mayor Nagin for the failure of people to evacuate, but Nagin blames the government for the lack of a timely rescue effort from federal assistance programs. If Mayor Nagin made an earlier attempt for mandatory evacuation and had not made promises to the citizens that they would be taken care of, then perhaps the dangerous rescues and the casualties of the remaining citizens of New Orleans would have been less …show more content…
More often than not public officials are tuned into scapegoats and can be fired or forced to resign. Sometimes this is unfair because there may be circumstances beyond the actors control at play. Another problem is that observers want to blamed their leaders, but fail to take responsibility and accountability for their own failures. For example, the residents of New Orleans blamed officials when they were not rescued, but failed to evacuate in the first place. Instead of recognizing that they made the choice not to evacuate, they played the blame game and blamed it on mayor Nagin’s promise that he would take care of them. The final problem is that bias between the actor and observers makes it harder to diagnose the initial cause of the problems. If a more objective analysis of the problems by both actors and observers happened, then there would more likely of been a quicker solution to many of the problems that have