Wednesday, January 18, 2006

I am so over New Orleans, I might as well be a blue roof.

I've had a few people ask me what I think of the mayor's odd comments about New Orleans being a "Chocolate City." My answer - other than being kind of odd, I don't think it's that big of a deal. Nagin has made a hell of an effort to reassure people that the city will revive. Whether you approve of him or not, he's an enormous improvement over the previous mayor who was shockingly corrupt. Nagin's done his best to clean up the corruption, and a lot of people hate him for it.

I'm a lot more bothered by the behavior of my fellow New Orleanians over the past month. First you have the lucky few whose homes were not severely damaged opposing trailers in their neighborhoods for those not so lucky. Then you have people, including members of the city council, claiming that converting some destroyed neighborhoods into green space to prevent future flooding is a tactic to keep African-Americans from returning. Never mind that both black and white neighborhoods are in question, and many black neighborhoods are also targeted for revitalization. Anytime anyone here doesn't like anything, it's a race issue.

Finally, we've got people who are shocked and appalled that the Mayor would acknowledge that New Orleans was and will continue to be a majority black city (albeit in an weird reference to a song by Parliament) but have nothing to say on the matter of shootings taking place at an MLK Day rally. The complacency that allows people to just roll their eyes and say "Oh, that's New Orleans" as if we don't deserve any better has allowed our city to decay for decades, and will keep on doing so despite our first real chance to rebuild since the Restoration.

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