In a speech this week to the National Newspaper Association (a consortium of newspapers that target black readers), Nagin seems to have alluded to a “conspiracy” to make New Orleans a white city. And once again, people are totally freaking out.
The quote that’s getting floated around is this one:
Ladies and gentlemen, what happened in New Orleans could happen anywhere…They are studying this model of natural disasters, dispersing the community and changing the electoral process in that community.
No one denies that the hardest hit communities from the storm were, and remain to this day, largely African-American. The storm, and the sad shrinking of our city that followed, has changed New Orleans in countless ways, including in no small part a significant shift in the electoral base. It doesn’t require a huge leap to see that this has paved the way for increased wealthy, white leadership in elected offices.
Many of the responses I’ve seen to Nagin’s latest comments wonder jokingly about a mysterious room full of old white men stroking their beards, trying to figure out how to get rid black leadership in New Orleans. People are asking, “Who is this ‘they’ Nagin is referring to?” — as if, if only Nagin could point to one specific guy, we’d take him more seriously. The Times Pic is asking its readers, “Is there a plot to keep African-Americans out of New Orleans?” Staff writer Jarvis DeBarry wonders if this isn’t just a smokescreen to “divert attention from [his] own weakness.”
But with all these questions, why is no one trying to parse out what Nagin was really getting at?
Why not take a long, hard look at what people really mean when they talk about the “opportunities” Katrina created in New Orleans? Why not look at plans to demolish local housing projects without plans to develop truly affordable housing? Why not look at Pres Kabacoff’s various interviews about “mixed income” neighborhoods?
It seems like Nagin can’t help himself, especially when he’s talking to largely black audiences. Like the elephant in the living room, there sits the fact that New Orleans is becoming a city that cannot welcome the citizens who own our history. Unfortunately, he can’t speak intelligently enough about it to move people to ask, how is racism tainting the rebuilding efforts in New Orleans?
It’s too bad, because that’s exactly what we need to do if all this work is going to take us somewhere new, somewhere better, somewhere we can all call home.
Posted by jackson on 20 Mar 2007
Filed Under: New Orleans | 1 Comment »
