Does a policy of the Federal Emergency Management Agency direct it to help "white people last" in 2024? No, that's not true: The document mentioning FEMA's "equity" goal cited on social media as proof says nothing about that. The agency has denied such accusations multiple times.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Threads on October 4, 2024. It said:
Friendly reminder: under the Biden Harris administration FEMA is supposed to help out white people last for the purpose of 'equity'. Don't believe me? It's literally on the FEMA website.
This is what the post looked like on Threads at the time of writing:
(Source: Threads screenshot taken on Mon Oct 7 14:15:21 2024 UTC)
In the comment section, the author added a link to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) website:
(Source: Threads screenshot taken on Mon Oct 7 14:15:21 2024 UTC)
The page seen in the screenshot above led to the 2022-2026 FEMA Strategic Plan (archived here) whose first stated goal (archived here) is to "instill equity as a foundation of emergency management."
The plan, however, said nothing about putting white people last in line for assistance.
Instead, the document discussed "tailored solutions" designed to meet the "unique needs" of different communities, including underserved ones.
When reached by Lead Stories via email on October 7, 2024, FEMA replied with a link to the Hurricane Helene "rumor response" page (archived here) that, in part, reads:
FEMA provides assistance to survivors regardless of race, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, English proficiency or economic status.
The faculty director of the Emergency and Disaster Management Program at Georgetown University, Tim Frazier, (archived here) told Lead Stories over the phone on October 7, 2024:
The policy is not being changed to make sure that white people are at the end of the line.
He continued:
What I know from the field is that there has always been sort of the challenge of getting aid in the hands of the people that need it the most -- for lots of different societal reasons, structural reasons. The effort now is probably stronger than it's ever been to make sure the people that need the aid get the aid. Some people view that as favoring nonwhite or traditionally marginalized groups, and I just think that's absolutely not true.
The challenges cited by Frazier included difficulties with navigating the application process and a lack of awareness of relevant government programs.
Those and other issues have been widely discussed in recent years.
In November 2020, the National Advisory Council Report to FEMA Administrator (archived here) addressed the disproportional distribution of aid across different income groups.
Nonprofits (archived here), emergency management academicians (archived here) and media outlets, including NPR (archived here), Politico (archived here) and The New York Times (archived here), published additional reports concluding that poor and nonwhite communities tend to receive less of what is needed to return to normal after a natural disaster.
Earlier, on September 30, 2024, Fox News published an article (archived here) implying the strategic plan somehow made the agency's emergency response to Hurricane Helene worse. The piece, however, offered no concrete evidence to support that except for several obscure posts on social media making unsubstantiated speculations.
FEMA Director of Public Affairs Jaclyn Rothenberg told Fox News that such implication "is a lie" and that the agency helps "all people regardless of background as fast as possible before, during and after disasters."
Other Lead Stories fact checks on claims related to Hurricane Helene can be found here.
