Many in the African American community assumed or hoped that the much talked about Dr. Michael Eric Dyson book "COME HELL or HIGH WATER about the Katrina disaster in New Orleans would make a major contribution toward framing a depth aggressive grass roots public debate and discussion of the best ways to reconstruct and modernize the industrial economy of New Orleans.

The assumption about Professor Dyson book was that Dr. Dyson has the necessary moral and intellectual critical tool kit and moral backbone to apply his critical method to a politically sensitive subject like oil.

If nothing else Dyson’s new book would use the massive amount of new information about the deep south and New Orleans to inform, arm and mobilized critical new layers of youth politicized and energized by Katrina to take action in defense of the City of New Orleans.

The key to mobilizing new layers of young people was arming them with new intellectual insight and weapons to deal with the political economy of their world.

The pre-flooding of New Orleans was the most in-depth studied event in modern human history. All hurricane respond around the world is based on Katrina like simulations designed on New Orleans. This massive and detailed pool of mission critical information allows anyone with a trained urban planning background to simulate the reconstruction and modernization of the New Orleans economy in virtual reality.

PBS, CCN, MSNBC, ABC, or any of the other major TV networks could publish on a web the necessary databases to contract a virtual reality New Orleans.

Building a virtual reality new industrial New Orleans on computers on TV to help Americans better understand what is necessary to rebuild New Orleans industrial base. Professor has the national support-base to help focus the debate to save in the industrial base of the region. Such a video game format would allow a full and in-depth public education about all the aspects of New Orleans.

Such a public debate would help create the pre-condition for the orderly development and funding of a recovery plan to support the return of many of the 425,000 displaced people from New Orleans.

This debate would also serve as a primary means to finally redress the deepening poverty revealed by Katrina and the massive flooding of New Orleans.

Professor Dyson’s book "Is Bill Cosby Right?" offered the type of in-depth, critical analysis that was needed to deal with the Oil industry that controls the political economy of both New Orleans and southern Louisiana.

There appears to be no fear in minister Dyson’s heart about calling spades a spade and confronting very politically sensitive issues with the big white men in New York City and Washington.

Brother Dyson teaches at the same university that houses the most powerful business school in the world, the Wharton School of Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. Just by his proximity to Wharton, Dr. Dyson should be one of the best-informed Black leaders in North America.

Many in the hood were sure super rich Exxon Mobil, other oil companies and President Bush would get the same ruthless beat down as Bill Cosby got from brother Dyson.

Given Dr. Dyson personal roots in Detroit, the most industrialized region in the world, he demonstrated understanding of the complex issues plaguing poor, youth and working class Black Americans. His book on Katrina was hoped to give a rare critical insight into the mission-critical tasks necessary to rebuilding a new and better New Orleans that would empower its Black and poor white masses.

With tens of billion of tax payers money already flowing into the economy of New Orleans, there was a political opportunity for Dyson and other hip-hop intellectuals to show young African Americans how to step correctly to the white man in New York City and the Oval Office laying out a Black action plan to save the poor and working brothers of New Orleans.

Professor Dyson let the readers know on the second page of the book his has no plans to defense New Orleans or the massive return of hundred of thousands of Blacks.

According to Professor Michael Eric Dyson own statements the book "COME HELL or HIGH WATER" was written as a political defense of the interest of the poor people of New Orleans. It appears Black interests are not in the reindustrialization of New Orleans.

Without making the linkage between ExxonMobil and other oil companies and the poverty of Black New Orleansians, Dr. Dyson’s argument and analysis fails the test very badly.

The uninformed reader of Dyson’s new book cannot understand why with oil prices at record highs, the people of the energy super region of New Orleans are not getting the benefits of the boom. Without grounding in the political economy of ExxonMobil economic reality, Dr. Dyson argument appears to be disconnected.

Dyson’s notion of white racism is also free of any linkage to other oil multinational nightmare cases in South America and the mothers that have forced Black people to live on less than a dollar a day.

This ruthless oil policy has led to an even worse level of poverty around the world. This economic phenomenon is commonly known as the so-called oil curse. The oil curse phenomenon had shown that in every case around the world where oil is concentrated, there is a high level of poverty and a class of local people who feed off the poverty and suffering of the masses of people.

The central-east African country of Chad is the perfect example. This same phenomenon is active in southern Louisiana between the major oil companies and the subject population of poor whites and Blacks.

Professor Dyson understood linking his analysis with the massive studies about the negative effects of oil. He tried by employing omission, to sanitize his argument to adjust for the oil curse by hiding the facts in the drama of Katrina. Rather than apply the oil curse to New Orleans and Katrina, Dr. Dyson tried to argue that 250 years of white racism, not the oil curse, is the cause of the immediate political situation of Blacks in southern Louisiana.

Neither historical analysis nor economics support Dr. Dyson’s postulation. What is ExxonMobil doing different in southern Nigeria, than southern Louisiana. What is the difference between Port Hard Court and New Orleans, beyond infrastructure scale? What’s the difference between the ruling and middle classes in Nigeria and Louisiana and relationship and treatment of the poor?

The answers are nothing.

After Dr. Dyson has sanitized his use of white racism to a very vague historical level, then the reader is led to the Dysonian conclusion for the tragedy of New Orleans. Two week after Dyson is rushed to the streets, Exxon released profits of $36 billion and the Black community is shocked by the less than critical analysis to link New Orleans to ExxonMobil.

Dr. Dyson is the only "new breed" historian who can openly talk about the deepening concentrations of black poverty in New Orleans and not connect it to the systemic loot of the Gulf region but the oil and chemical companies.

The unsavory truth of the exposure of the extreme richness of the oil companies that exist side by side with the extreme poverty of the Black people of New Orleans is ruthlessly clear to every one but the readers of Dyson book on New Orleans and Katrina. The fact that Exxon Mobil has profits of $36 billion dollars for 2005 up from $25 billion in 2004 has no reliance to the Dyson analysis of poverty in New Orleans.

None of this money was set aside for Katrina related personal or business claims against ExxonMobil and other oil company’s massive spills and linkages in New Orleans City Water System.

The African American community is left to question why Professor Dyson did not raise or politically connecte the deadly economic link between ExxonMobil and poor Black people of New Orleans and southern Louisiana in his massive analytical model.

Louisiana, ranked 45^th among the states with per captia personal income of $24,535. Compared with $ 30,472 for the national (U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economics Analysis). According to the US Census Bureau per captia personal income in 1999 (dollar) for New Orleans City was $17,258.

Malcolm X provides the most critical insight into how to judge a made man. In Malcolm X’s metaphoric analysis of the House Nigger and the field Nigger.

The critical point was developed on the Master centric way the House Nigger thinks and process immediate reality and events. That is, the House Nigger processes reality in terms of the vested interests of the master.

The House Nigger behavior at the end of the date directly contributes to the maintenance and growth of the master control and profits, at the expense of the subject slave population and field Niggers. Malcolm X use of the medical model to define the master-centric way of defining health and sickness is the key to the Malcolm X methodology. That is, being made is determined by what you say in direct relation to what you do.

Dr. Dyson attempt to disconnect white racism from the oil curse reveals a dangerous ahistorical manipulation of historical fact and political reality. The attempt clearly suggests a made man behavior. The direct political consequence of the manipulation is to grossly distort the way information and events are processed by the reader.

Dr. Dyson refers to this manipulation of reality in the book "COME HELL or HIGH WATER" as memory warfare.

Malcolm X using the medical model of sick correctly reveals Dyson’s memory war force as perceptional distortion or learned haplessness of oppressed people. Hegel referred to it in the essay on the master/slave.

Dr. Dyson is one of a "new breed" Black historian who can talk and write a critical analysis about the deepening concentrations of black poverty in New Orleans but not politically connect the poverty to the systemic looting of the Gulf region by the multinational oil and chemical companies and not be called a Exxon Mobil made man.

The fact that Professor Dyson can write a book about the nightmare of New Orleans not attacking the forced depopulation of 400,000 African Americans from their city of 500 years or the oil industrial and not be accused of being a corporate House Nigger, reflects a learned fear of large multinational and a basic weaken in the African political culture.

ExxonMobil has a board of $36 billion in low yielding cash, even after paying $7 billion dollars in dividends and buying back $16 billion of shares last year. Many of ExxonMobil shareholders know the company has a moral obligation to come to the aid of New Orleans in a real way.

Professor Dyson has the kind of voice that would make ExxonMobil listen. The notion of what is necessary for a modern industry economy in New Orleans is well known. For Dr. Dyson to focus on the basic outline of an industrial development plan would allow ExxonMobil and other oil companies to try and find a fix. New Orleans is a test case model for other oil-cursed industrial regions around the world to transition away from oil to generalized manufacture. New Orleans is in the local economic situation to make the full and immediate transition to generalized advanced manufacturing.

While ExxonMobil has no good history of developing business models outside oil, they have the money and the public relations imperative to do so. ExxonMobil can take a long-term look at seed capital for mixed housing solutions to replace public housing for low income and working class people.

It is a public fact that ExxonMobil is a major donor to both the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton School of Business. ExxonMobil is listed as a donor of the Avalon Foundation in the Humanities and African Studies, of the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Dyson not talking about the relationship of oil and Black poverty in New Orleans is like trying to talk about economic development in Nigeria, Venezuela or Sudan. His failure to develop any analysis leaves the subject of oil and Blacks in New Orleans open to serious risk of misinformation and manipulations. One in every four workers in pre-Katrina New Orleans manufacture was involved in oil-related production. How can Professor Dyson’s argument maintain relevance without stating and trying to understand this interdependent relationship?

Oil and chemical production is over 50 per cent of the GDP of New Orleans region economy. Discussion of the political economy of Black New Orleanains poverty outside of the matrix of oil past a point is meaningless. Dr. Dyson’s book never developed an outline, much less an understanding of the political economy of oil. As stated above in the preface of his book "COME HELL or HIGH WATER" openly supports the creation of a service driven New Orleans. Dyson says—"New Orleans will be rebuilt…Las Vegas in Louisiana"…page xi.

Professor Dyson needs to define the moral contract ExxonMobil and other oil companies should have with the Black people of New Orleans. He should define the areas of industrial investments ExxonMobil should make in the post-Katrina world. This critical task was omitted in the first edition of "COME HELL or HIGH WATER". Not to do so is tantamount to being an ExxonMobil made man.

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