Vol. 74/No. 31      August 16, 2010

A little publicized aspect of this disaster is the disproportionate effect on oystermen and fishermen in Louisiana who are Black. Fifty miles south of New Orleans are the towns of Phoenix, Davant, and Pointe a la Hache, which comprise one of the state’s largest stretches of Black fishing communities.

For decades the area has subsisted on oyster harvesting and shrimping. The residents have fought discrimination from the state and federal governments, as well as lending institutions. Now with almost a quarter of the Gulf of Mexico closed to fishing, Black oystermen and fishermen are finding it hard to get work on the BP cleanup operations.

“Through the years, due to unfair policies from both the state and federal governments, we’ve lost about 90% of our oyster farms, and probably the same amount of boats,” Byron Encalade, president of the Louisiana Oystermen Association, told Our Time Press.

In the 1960s and 70s, Blacks began to purchase their own boats in spite of many discriminatory practices aimed at discouraging them. In the 1970s Blacks fought and overturned laws that prevented oystermen from hand dredging, a practice derogatorily called “coonin’.” This procedure is used by oystermen who don’t have the vessels or equipment to scoop oysters in bulk.

In 1963 when state officials built the White Ditch Siphon, to flush fresh water from the Mississippi River into the bays and bayous, it destroyed most of the oyster beds owned by Blacks, said Encalade. Oysters need a mix of salt and fresh water, but too much fresh water will harm them.

At the peak, Blacks owned almost 10,000 acres of oyster beds. Today that number is closer to 1,500. State officials have opened the siphon again in order to push oil out of the marsh, and oystermen fear this will deal even more blows to their already fragile existence.

Hurricane Katrina in 2005 caused major damage to Black oystermen and fishermen. Only 60 percent of the Blacks who lived in the area before Katrina returned following the storm.

Nearly all of the Black oystermen have taken oil cleanup courses from BP but only a handful have been called to work, reports the New York Times. “They ain’t hiring nobody from East Bank,” said Orin Bentley. “The little guy loses again,” said another oysterman.

In a recent radio interview Rev. Tyronne Edwards of the Fishermen and Concerned Citizens of Plaquemines Parish pointed to the class bias of the government’s response. “We see the same dynamic taking place [as] with Katrina, where the emphasis is being placed on the large business community,” Edwards said. “We think we deserve the same kind of treatment as big business and casinos.”

Speaking in St. Bernard Parish in June before a Congressional subcommittee on the impact of the oil spill, Clarence Duplessis of Davant testified that Black oystermen are watching “our livelihoods and even an entire culture being washed away by crude oil and chemicals that no one knows the long term effects of.”

“We’re going to stay here and fight,” says Encalade. “We’ll never leave. That’s just not in our vocabulary.”  
 
 
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