Sure, Ray Nagin Should Look Before He Leaps – But He’s Not the Only One
Poor Ray Nagin can’t get it right to save his life.
When Katrina was churning toward the Gulf coast, the mayor of New Orleans ordered evacuation. A good thing.
Recognizing that many people had no means of escape or no place to go, he opened the Superdome as a safe haven. Good again.
But Nagin failed to stock the Superdome with provisions and seriously underestimated demand for space and security in the huge facility. Bad move. It was a recipe for inhumane conditions under the dome -- miseries that smack of a Third World hovel.
In Katrina’s aftermath, Nagin spoke confidently of rebuilding. Another good move. Hope, the mother of optimism, was as important for the mental health of New Orleaneans as potable water was to their physical well-being.
But he called folks home before there was housing, before all of the nasty water had been drained from their neighborhoods, before the schools had reopened. In short, he asked them to come back to nothingness.
In his latest misstep, Nagin famously portrayed New Orleans as a “chocolate city” and allowed that God himself prefers it that way. His comments set off a firestorm, with outraged objectors accusing the mayor of being divisive and even racist.
Nagin has apologized for his comment. He says it was particularly “inappropriate” of him to announce what God wants.
No doubt about it; Nagin needs to take a few deep breaths before he speaks. He needs to think things through before opening his mouth.
But that also goes for his apology. Rather than apologize for calling New Orleans a “chocolate city” -- and explaining how, by that, he really meant blending dark chocolate and white milk -- he might have asked why folks were getting so worked up.
Pre-Katrina, the population of New Orleans was more than two-thirds black. If anyplace qualifies as a “chocolate city,” New Orleans, like Atlanta, does. That does not mean exclusively black, of course, neither in actuality or by intent.
By vowing that New Orleans would once again be a “chocolate city,” Nagin was giving hope to the displaced many who have lost their homes, their livelihoods, their lifestyles, their sense of community and belonging to Katrina and who, like anyone would, want them back. They are entitled to that hope.
And just as the predominance of black citizens pre-Katrina did not preclude or exclude other races from settling and enjoying the life there, the reflavoring of New Orleans does not mean other ethnicities have no place in New Orleans Redux.
You have to wonder how forced and possibly fake the offensiveness is. It is, in the least, unfounded. After all, look at who’s already back. For the most part, they aren’t the chocolate drops.
Where was their outrage when Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alfonso Jackson predicted that New Orleans would not “be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again"?
The remark was explained away as a forecast, not wishful thinking. Some of the same folks who find no fault with Jackson’s prognostications find Nagin’s racially offensive.
Maybe Nagin is not the only one who should look before he leaps.
So should the folks who have been so rankled by the “chocolate city” remark. What’s really got their goat? That, even after all this disturbance, they may still have to share New Orleans?
Deborah Mathis, BAW
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Monday, January 23rd 2006 at 2:53PM
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