There has been a lot of talk in recent weeks about post racial America. But it was just over three years ago that Hurricane Katrina battered the Gulf Coast and revealed just how ugly America’s racial and economic divide remains. After an 18 month investigation, journalist A.C. Thompson published a report, Katrina’s Hidden Race War, in The Nation that details vigilante violence in the city of New Orleans in the days after the hurricane. Most of the early stories covering these vigilantes were largely sympathetic. But as Thompson outlines it is a much more complicated tale.

Although there has been a large response to the story online, there has been no official comment or effort to investigate the shootings.