I remember being glued to the TV in 2005, unable to look away as Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. I watched in disbelief as floodwaters swallowed neighborhoods. I saw people stranded on rooftops waving for help. I saw the fear inside the Superdome. But nothing hit harder than hearing the media refer to Black residents as “refugees.”
“Refugees?” In our own country? That was disrespectful and dehumanizing. We weren’t outsiders—we were citizens. Poor, Black, and abandoned.
But what many didn’t know—and what Ryan Coogler just laid bare in his new docuseries Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time—is that Katrina wasn’t just a natural disaster. It was man-made in so many ways. The warnings were there. The failures were preventable.
Let’s go back.
After Hurricane Betsy slammed into New Orleans in 1965, causing widespread flooding, Congress tasked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with designing a hurricane protection system. They were supposed to make sure this kind of disaster never happened again. But guess what? Experts warned the Corps for decades that the levees couldn’t withstand a direct hit. Instead of fixing the flaws, they pushed ahead with outdated, under-designed systems. And when Katrina came, those levees failed in over 50 places, drowning entire neighborhoods. Nearly 1,400 people died. Over a million were displaced. And the damage? $125 billion.
The result was one of the worst humanitarian crises in American history—and one of the most avoidable.
Fast forward 20 years. Coogler, through his Proximity Media banner, teamed up with National Geographic to release a four-part documentary series that unpacks it all. Race Against Time doesn’t just show what happened—it explains why. Using personal footage, survivor testimonies, and damning historical facts, the doc holds a mirror to government failure at every level.
One of the most disturbing things revealed? The government’s efforts to block people from rebuilding. Survivors shared how agencies dragged their feet, denied funds, and set up barriers that made it nearly impossible to return home. They didn’t just let New Orleans drown—they tried to erase the communities who lived there.
Inside the Superdome, Coogler’s doc shows scenes that are still hard to watch. No toilets. No food. People dying in plain sight. Yet somehow, the media painted survivors as criminals instead of victims. Instead of helping, many chose to criminalize.
But what makes Race Against Time so powerful is that it doesn’t stop at the pain. It highlights the resilience. The culture. The comeback.
Because New Orleans didn’t fold. The people rebuilt from the mud and trauma. Black culture survived. The music, the food, the pride—it all endured. Communities refused to be erased, no matter how long it took to get the help they deserved.
Ryan Coogler didn’t just make a documentary—he gave us the truth we never got in 2005. He honored the people who lived through hell and exposed the systems that left them there.
If you haven’t watched it yet, please do. Ryan did an amazing job—as always.
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