No, the insuation that I have picked up is, all of New Orleans was a ghetto, when it was not. That 30% white population, almost none of that was poor. New Orleans before the storm had the distinction of being America's only major city with more people in private school than public school. The white areas of New Orleans tended to be more affluent than white areas in the metro at large, because people had extra expenses there they wouldn't in the suburbs. Many of those houses in Lakeview were fairly small, and you could get more for your money in the burbs, but people chose to live there because they wanted to be close to work, they could afford to send their kids to Catholic school, and often times, they had long family ties to the area. When we lived there, you could go into certain areas, and find that people were all somehow extended family, it was really close-knit.
What I have a problem with is when the whole city of New Orleans is judged by the actions of some trash out in the projects who do not serve as a representation of the whole city. It still costs you an arm and a leg to live in the Quarter, and living in Uptown has not really been all that cheap. In Uptown too, you find generation after generation who continously make a home there, and they are completely a world apart from the vagabonds you'd see walking around if you went too far in the wrong direction down Desire Street.
As in many cities, the good parts of New Orleans are truly excellent. And as in many cities, the bad parts of New Orleans are truly awful. The comments you find so offensive reflect the disappointment of some, including me, that NO's trash element is returning. I had hoped -- and still hope -- that most of the low-lying sections (and therefore cheapest and most rundown) will not be rebuilt, and that the remaining properties will be too expensive (due to scarcity) for the worst of NO's former population to live in. That would be Katina's silver lining.
Please don't take this the wrong way, but take what your saying and magnify it and you get all of Louisiana.
I am originally from the Lake Charles area. My whole life people who knew I was from Louisiana would ask me when they heard something about NOLA. It was always bad. Always.
Nobody outside of LA has any clue about the rest of the state. Maybe 25% have heard or Shreveport or Baton Rouge, but only because the drove along I20 or watched their team play LSU. So every time something bad makes national news out of NOLA, most seem to assume that goes for the whole state. So for you to try and say it's not fair because problems in the ninth ward shouldn't reflect badly on Lakeview or the Quarter is a little naive.
The rest of the country thinks that all of LA is either swamp or ghetto/gangbanger territory. Well, that and everybody outside NOLA is named Boudreaux or Thibodeaux and their kids take a pirouge (pronounced 'pee row' not 'pee rogee') to shcool.
It's kind of like how I don't know anything about Michigan except Detroit is crime ridden cess pitt and the University of Michigan is really good at football. Well...
I think the reason that happens more with New Orleans than other cities, is because New Orleans often shows as the single most violent large city in the country, when it comes to crime rankings. Its murder rate beats out Detroit and Baltimore and DC by a wide margin. New Orleans racked up more murders every month than some other large cities had all year.
Unfortunately, New Orleans is making a strong comeback when it comes to homicide, after a lull in the violence. So, while some parts of New Orleans are quite nice, the worst parts are the worst in the whole country.
And that's frustrating, since the city would be so much improved, if it could just get the third-world homicide rate under control.