Hurricane Harvey revealed the awesome power of real America
Following the news over the past weeks and months was making me sad. It gave the impression of an America hopelessly hostile and divided by race, class and politics, at swords’ points over even the smallest disagreements, with a government that seemed unable to perform the simplest task effectively. Then came Hurricane Harvey, and the real America appeared.
The government response to Harvey - unlike the earlier botched responses to Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy - seems to be going well. But the real story isn’t what the government is doing. It’s what ordinary Americans are doing.
Across the affected area, Americans are coming together to help each other. Despite the racial divisions exacerbated by small numbers of fanatics on the left and right, (and amplified by the press), out in the real America white people, black people and Asians helped each other, men rescued women and children, and so on. The “Cajun Navy,” which had so distinguished itself in response to flooding in Louisiana, took its boats to Texas and started saving people.
People formed human chains to rescue victims, a black man (sent via Chik-fil-A) rescued an elderly white woman from her home on a jet-ski, driving it right out of her flooded living room. Some of the people helping were rich, others clearly were not. Likewise those they helped. The photos of rescuers and rescued show the kind of wide-ranging diversity that our colleges and corporations aspire to, but usually fail to deliver.
Asked what he was going to do as he prepared his boat, a Texas man responded, “I'm gonna try to save some lives.” A report from Agence France Presse said it best: "In Devastated Houston ‘Nobody Hates Anybody’ As People Come Together."
That’s the real America, the one that emerges in crisis. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, yachtsmen, ferrymen, fishermen and ordinary citizens in pleasure boats collaborated - without being told what to do by the government or media, in what one publication called an American "Dunkirk,” evacuating people from Manhattan and bringing critically needed suppies in. They provided the logistical core of relief efforts in lower Manhattan until the federal government took over - four days later.
And we’ve seen similar demonstrations elsewhere. The good news is that while disaster-relief authorities used to look down on civilians who wanted to help - amateur rescuers in Katrina had to literally sneak in to New Orleans - now they’ve embraced what they call “whole community response,” in which the efforts of volunteers and residents are welcomed, and in which citizens are encouraged to prepare for disasters in advance.
And, as I wrote in my book, "An Army of Davids" over a decade ago, modern communications technology and social media make it possible for individuals and groups to self-organize without needing instructions from some sort of Central Control. Instead of vertical information flows, we get “horizontal knowledge.” And that’s exactly what’s happened with the Cajun Navy and other rescuers in the aftermath of Harvey.
What’s amazing is how much of the traditional American “can-do” spirit survives despite a media environment that is relentlessly and seemingly purposefully negative, almost as if it’s designed to divide and demoralize us. But the Harvey experience shows that the real America has survived and even flourished. May that continue to be the case.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor and the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.