There's so much wrong-headed stuff going on hereabouts, Bob, that I'm not sure just which dumbass rules you refer to.

The worst of all the federal rules are those which forbid FEMA to provide funding for repairing or building permanent housing, only for temporary lodging (rent payment, hotel bills).

I can see how this was originally intended, to prevent pork-barrel-type profiteering by building contractors, and also as a measure against favoritism for property owners as opposed to renters, but in a situation where so very much of a region's housing stock has been badly damaged, and where recovery is so certain to take years rather than months, it leads to incredible waste.

People were stuck in motel rooms for months and months, unable to cook and forced to spend money they didn't have on eating out. Meanwhile, houses that could be undergoing repair sat festering and falling into worse and worse condition every day.

Nothing "Jim Crow" about that, not even unintentionally. If more black folks than white are affected, it's only because more than half the population of New Orleans is of African descent (and, or course, an even higher percentage of the poor ~ not a surprise and not unlike any other American city, although probably less so.)

Not all the poor are black, however, and not all the blacks are poor. We have a very large black middle class and upper-middle class population ~ including the political ruling class ~ and of course there are also plenty of white folks of modest means. No one is exempt from the suffering