They got both
It's not often we get a chance to look at class, poverty and race in a way which isn't almost guaranteed to be polarised at the outset. Having a disaster as impersonal as Katrina gives Dyson just the backdrop needed to show that much of what happened to the poor of New Orleans (and in particular the black poor) was the result of systemic problems; related directly to how we, as a society, treat the poor, and those whom we marginalise, caused much of what what went wrong.The book doesn't address (at least in the first edition) why it is that New Orleans has not been rebuilt, but the same forces which neglected the city for so long, are probably critical to the lack of real rebuilding.For anyone who wants a starting point to look at race, and poverty in the United States, this makes a good one. The writing is plain, but not dumbed down, and the bibliography is complete; so the basis for his work is there to be seen; and as a springboard the book is excellent.