Former Mayor of Atlanta and UN Ambassador Andrew Young, who was born in New Orleans, had a more nuanced reaction to the disaster: "I was surprised and not surprised. It's not just a lack of preparedness. I think the easy answer is to say that these are poor people and black people and so the government doesn't give a damn ... there might be some truth to that. But I think we've got to see this as a serious problem of the long-term neglect of an environmental system on which our nation depends."