I used to teach in the Ninth Ward back in the early Seventies and if you got away from Desire and Florida projects,most of the folks in the Ninth were hard working people working the usual array of menial jobs available to blacks at the time who had very little education.
Even Desire had a lot of great kids coming out of it back then.They had it hard but were determined to break the cycle of"Mr. Welfare and Mr. Food Stamp",as they labeled the meager government checks they lived on.Then the crack monster hit and "it was on from dusk till dawn".I came back to The Bay by the late Seventies but I still keep in touch with a few of my old students.Some are doing way better than the expectations both white society and other blacks had of their future.
I was working at a black man's house over in New Orleans East. I had to watch what I said because he was going on about how integration ended up ruining the black community. Those that worked hard...worked harder to get out of their to get away from the trash. Without the industrious hard working maddle class man the neighborhoods became filled with deadbeats and soon entire neighborhoods became nothing but trash.
I just stood there listening because I'm conditioned that as a white guy anything I say concerning race is most likely racist.