It is hard to imagine New Orleans without large creole and black communities. Mardi Gras with Mariachi bands - it could work, I guess.
The tastelessness of Nagin's bringing race into the "y'all come back" discussion in this particular way was disappointing to hear, but in general I think people make too big a fuss over careless remarks.
Also, from my perspective as an older person who has lived in several cities, large demographic/ethnic shifts happen with regularity. I once lived in an Italian Catholic enclave where people who weren't Italian were regarded with suspicion and outright discrimination; yet the local Catholic church had the names of dozens of Irish priests, bishops and former parishioners engraved in marble plaques inside the church and certainly in the cemetery.
My birthplace, Washington DC, has been going through this difficulty since the late 50s, when the civil rights legislation was passed and government jobs were suddenly available to blacks, who flooded into white working-class neighborhoods, with the added impetus of realtors who "red-lined" the areas that would be "sold to black" and which would not. "White flight" to the suburbs ensued, mostly by lower-middle-income whites. Now real estate costs so much anywhere in DC that white yuppies are trying to "gentrify" those all-black enclaves, which are fighting back with signs in the front yard and angry civic meetings. Some of the people wanting to get back in are people whose parents and grandparents felt pushed out of their homes, churches and family gravesites in the 50s. An African-American woman was quoted in the Washington Post as saying that blacks preferred to live with their own. *Sigh.* This is progress?
The question I have is this: if many of the displaced from N'Orleans will not be back, shouldn't the city clear the slate and reconsider whether or not to rebuild in the low-lying areas? Are there higher-ground areas adjacent that could be redeveloped in greater safety? Perhaps new communities could be more successfully integrated, so that you wouldn't have the reinstituting of racial enclaves.
I think the problem is many well-connected black politicians will lose influence if the black community doesn't come back. This makes decisions (and statements) more political then reality based.
My memories of New Orleans go back a long way to my childhood.
Coincidentally, the civil rights movement and the segregation of neighborhoods in New Orleans occurred almost simultaneously. Prior to the civil rights era, the New Orleans I remember was the most thoroughly integrated city I have ever experienced in that areas of white and black residents co-existed peacefully in close proximity to one another almost like blocks on a checkerboard.
With more prosperous times in the 1950s and 1960s, came "urban renewal" in formerly blighted neighborhoods. I remember seeing stable neighborhoods with their "stoop culture" [neighbors sitting on their porch or front steps visiting with each other]. Children could play safely on the banquette or in their yards because there were always neighbors about. All of this changed, with the advent of air conditioning, to empty street scenes devoid of people.
Urban renewal caused property values to soar. Many folks chose to benefit from the sale of greatly appreciated property. Others, renters, were displaced when speculators bought up property, renovated it and the former renters could not afford the increased rents. There were also generational changes. Many of the homes that were "doubles" [owner occupied on one side with renters on the other side] were sold by heirs when their parents [the owners] died. These were renovated and the rents often quadrupled.
I remember many times hearing [or reading in the newspaper] the comment of angry, displaced people that: "Urban renewal means Negro removal". And, it did. Societal, cultural, and economic changes, all cyclical things, contributed to New Orleans becoming more segregated in its housing than it had ever been before.
As the "stoop culture" disappeared, people stayed inside and watched television in their air conditioned houses that occupied empty street scenes. Crime rates soared. It was a cycle ... the fewer folks there were "taking the air", visiting with their neighbors, the emptier the streets became ... crime increased ... and people became afraid to be out.
"Gentrification" of various architecturally interesting neighborhoods was a mixed blessing. Not only did property values increase too much for a lot of folks [white and black] to remain in the neighborhoods but, also, the diverse mix of residents that always made New Orleans such an interesting city began to change to a bunch of Yuppies [mostly white, some black] in one part of the city and less prosperous blacks somewhere else.
New Orleans was still changing in the years leading up to Hurricane Katrina. Fashionable, trendy Magazine Street, now a Street of Dreams and fancy shoppes and charming boutiques ... was not quite so charming 25 years ago. I remember all too well when the stock boy at the friendly neighborhood A&P, in about the 3300 block of Magazine Street, had his throat cut from ear to ear; and, another time, when patrons were hiding behind the potato chip rack during a shoot out at the same store. Cityscapes change with the times. Some changes are good and others are not.
My understanding is that it was not until after Hurricane Betsy [mid-1960s] that the Lower 9th Ward became a predominantly black neighborhood. As late as the early 1980s, however, I knew an artist, who was white, with a Masters Degree in Art from Newcomb College, who still lived in her family's home in the Lower 9th Ward.
In my early childhood, the Lower 9th Ward was still a blue collar, white neighborhood. Those folks recognized the value of educating their children ... who then moved to the suburbs.
Many blacks in the Lower 9th Ward, prior to Hurricane Katrina, recognized the value of education, as well, and their children have also moved on to better things. Economic class has never been a static thing in this country. It is in a constant state of flux ... with some moving up and some moving down ... and, then, sometimes up again ... constantly changing.
Just as I have outlined above the many cyclical changes that have occurred in the housing market in New Orleans over my lifetime, Hurricane Katrina will someday be viewed as a cyclical change, as well ... albeit it a precipitous one.
Hurricane Katrina has been a life altering event for New Orleans and for the people who lived there. All the planning in the world will not alter the fact that serendipity will be the ultimate force that will re-shape the city. Despite our best efforts to study and manipulate the desires and behaviour of human beings, these things remain mutable and unpredictable. Some will see opportunity beckoning them to rebuild New Orleans ... while others will see only destruction and despair and will rebuild their lives elsewhere.
Only time will tell what New Orleans will become ... and whether it will be an amalgam of races living happily together ... or will be a chocolate city ... or whatever.
I do not believe that New Orleans will ever be the same. Perhaps it should not be. Over the past quarter of a century New Orleans lost a quarter of its population because those bright and talented people had found life in New Orleans untenable.
Just as we cannot, and should not, go back to horse and buggy days, or Jim Crow days, or colonial times ... New Orleans cannot go back to the way it was. That is over. That is past. Whether for the good or bad, our entire nation, including New Orleans, is experiencing a changing demographic.
I do believe that humankind is basically good and that, given an opportunity to develop itself, without too much manipulation and social engineering, the new New Orleans that will emerge from the disaster that was Hurricane Katrina has a bright future ahead of it. We can all pray that this is so.