Summary Of Diary From The Dome By Paul A. Harris

For my midterm book review I chose, Diary From The Dome: Reflections on Fear and Privilege during Katrina, by Paul A. Harris. Paul Harris is currently the manager of a library information desk at the University of California, San Diego. In his book, Mr. Harris begins by recounting his first visit to New Orleans 28 years prior to Hurricane Katrina. He falls in love with the city even though he only spends a few days there. He later makes several more trips. On his fateful trip to trip to the city in August of 2005; he gets a whole lot more than he bargained for. When Mr. Harris realizes he isn’t going to be able to escape the city, he takes shelter in Superdome with thousands of other people. The conditions at first are uncomfortable, but still
There were several major occurrences where race played a role in his decision making or judgement of a person's behavior. When his international group was rescued early, he attributed this as being due to his group being predominantly white. (Harris 47-48) While I believe there may be some truth to that, I think it is incredibly arrogant and ungrateful for him complain about the motivations of the people who helped him. Those National Guardsmen were doing everything they could to help people and keep order. His group was lucky enough to get released early and he decided to attack the moral character of those who helped him. Interestly enough you don’t see Mr. Harris turn down the benefits of this act of racial favoritism. There were other examples of race playing a role in the story, but this is what stood out the most. Any luck the author has in the story is often attributed to racial motivations of those who are helping him, and yet he never once turns downs this supposed ill gotten aid to uphold his clearly superior sense of morality; and I think that speaks volumes about his character and how he views white people from the