Katrina reawakened debate on race and class, says theologian

Published: 2005-10-04

TORONTO (CNS) -- Race, gender, culture, religion, class and poor black people stranded in the flooded out Louisiana Superdome all have something to do with each other, said a leading black Catholic theologian. M. Shawn Copeland, a former president of the Catholic Theological Association of America, believes Hurricane Katrina reawakened the debate about race and class in America, and she is convinced the issues it raised can be better understood if Catholic theology is applied to them. Copeland has been flooded out of one of her two teaching jobs at the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University of Louisiana, a historically black Catholic university in downtown New Orleans. She also teaches theology at Boston College. With the news coverage in New Orleans immediately after the levees broke, Americans were reminded that race and class still matter, Copeland told The Catholic Register, a Toronto-based weekly, in a telephone interview from Boston.

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