(I couldn’t post this to Daily Kos, so I’m posting it here first.)
We’ve all been media-saturated with what I call New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s “chocolate” statement. You know: the free-form speech he gave on the King holiday, that he wanted to see New Orleans turn back into a “chocolate city,” a term that means that he wants to return New Orleans to its pre-Katrina black majority population. Milk chocolate has nothing to do with it. And of course, that God, rather than manmade actions like poor environmental and urban planning and global warming, has it in for New Orleans (and by extension, the Gulf States and Florida) because of the evil the U.S. does around the globe, particularly in Iraq.
Previously, Nagin has pleaded with former residents to return to a polluted and ruined city before it was deemed safe. He begged that blacks come home so that Latino workers who are helping to clean up and rebuild the city won’t “take over.” To all of these demands, however, blacks have not responded in kind.
I’ve said before that Nagin is a rank opportunist and someone trying to play both sides in an increasingly fractious class and racial situation. This time, in trying to play to the Amen Corner in the black community, his tightrope-walking strategy has been exposed for what it really is.
Ask yourselves this question:
If Ray Nagin really has the welfare of New Orleans blacks and poor in mind, then why has he made developers like Joseph Canizaro, head of the Bring New Orleans Commission (BNOB) and made Pres Kabacoff and Jimmy Reiss, chairman of the New Orleans Business Council (who ebulliently made comments to the Wall Street Journal about remaking the city) members of that same board? Wikipedia has the lineup.
Canizaro, in particular, was responsible for the bulldozing of the St. Thomas Housing Development in the 1990s when it got in the way of his plans for a WalMart. Fifteen hundred souls were dispersed when the St. Thomas project was razed. It had been located in the Garden District on high ground. Community activists like BNOB co-chair Barbara Major as well as civic leaders were bought off at the altar of “progress.” Many of the St. Thomas residents were still homeless by the time Katrina hit and others eventually went to the Ninth Ward where they were again dispersed–or drowned.
So don’t think that Nagin hasn’t been bought. He has, since the beginning, when not-so-clandestine meetings were held with these same movers and pressurers about the reconstruction and restoral of the city, as indicated in my diary 24 Questions About the Murder of the Big Easy. For those who need their brains refreshed:
- What significance attaches to the fact that the chair of the Transportation Authority, appointed by Mayor Nagin, is Jimmy Reiss, the wealthy leader of the New Orleans Business Council which has long advocated a thorough redevelopment of (and cleanup of crime in) the city?
- Under what authority did Mayor Nagin meet confidentially in Dallas with the “forty thieves”–white business leaders led by Reiss–reportedly to discuss the triaging of poorer Black areas and a corporate-led master plan for rebuilding the city?
- As politicians talk about “disaster czars” and elite-appointed reconstruction commissions, and as architects and developers advance utopian designs for an ethnically cleansed “new urbanism” in New Orleans, where is any plan for the substantive participation of the city’s ordinary citizens in their own future?
To answer No. 24, hardly any plan at all.
It’s been up to the folks themselves from having to rescue themselves from the water, to having to bring themselves back to New Orleans after being flung hundreds away in other states. And for the folks to join forces and organize themselves against being shunted off with less, with their property taken away using eminent domain.
At the end of the day, being a part of the reconstruction plans may have kept Nagin in power with whites who are now, for the first time in decades, in the majority in New Orleans
However, Nagin is still answerable to those middle-class and working poor blacks still living in or who wishing to return to New Orleans. Those people are not necessarily willing to give up their land and property without a fight and who can see through to the game being dealt. This includes members of his own class, the black Creoles, who are under pressure as well and are being forced out of New Orleans. Under Nagin, however, it is dog eat dog. They all want Nagin to do something. They want to believe that he is not really in the pocket of those who want to ethnically cleanse New Orleans and redeem it from black control. But he is in the developers’ pocket, and he won’t do anything except get on a bully pulpit. Hence yesterday’s shooting from the lip.
Nagin feels that he has to show that he is still answerable to black aspirations or goals, which has been the burden of many urban black mayors. So to show his solidarity, or his blackness as it were, Nagin decided to pander to black New Orleanians, taking the name of the true American saint and martyr, Martin Luther King Jr., to give credence to his remarks.
I saw Nagin “preach.” And my mouth forgot to close. Frankly, if the shade of MLK, Jr. is still hovering over us, he has more to worry about close to Atlanta, where his Center and his very bones may be up for sale. But I digress: I was not impressed with Nagin’s calling on God when he has contributed in his own way to insuring that the masters of the universe were going to take over in New Orleans. As I have said before, the aftermath of Katrina has been strictly manmade.
Nagin is going to be apologizing forever for that speech.
Whites are ticked off at him for allegedly causing more polarization; but really, that polarization was in place even before Katrina came ashore. Fact is, whites don’t want a return to the status quo: a majority black city. For them, blackness means crime, anarchy and drugs. They want to flex muscle. They want to limit reintegration of black residents in New Orleans. I think the white business community is going to realize that they really don’t need Nagin anymore to placate anyone–blacks, liberals/progressives, Washington. Sooner rather than later, they will slough him off; while the true activists and their supporters will have continued to fight against the BNOB and have won some victories despite Nagin playing lightning rod…and golf.
And I truly believe that this incident is not impressing his dwindling natural constituency at all, or causing them to stand up for him in large numbers. Like any other Christian wingnut, Nagin criticized New Orleans blacks for their shortcomings that he said even offended the Deity. (So Katrina was their fault after all.) He even criticized and blamed them again for not being prepared for the hurricane. This is not something that is going to endear him with many blacks, who despite their religiosity know full well what their social, political and economic problems are and what they would like to see changed, and they know that housecleaning does not stop at their front door.
This “preaching” is not unlike that of the new police superintendent Warren Riley who swayed the black SCLC ministers who confronted him because of the recent police shooting of a schizoid black man. Riley’s got a few skeletons shaking in his own closet: he once refused to assist a woman who begged him for help against another police officer that he knew, and the woman was murdered. Folks are probably taking a broad hint: don’t be played and taken off track by this kind of thing.
The difference between Dr. King and Ray Nagin is that I think King knew, by the time of his death, what full economic rights for blacks was about and what it meant. It certainly did not mean patronage or fighting over scraps. Without economic rights, there would be no black communities from which the Word could spread, no base from which civil rights for blacks could continue and flourish. There would only be redlining and low paying jobs and benefits and poor schools.
Ray Nagin does not possess the same understanding as King. Nagin had the luxury of moving his family to safety and going on a Caribbean vacation, while many of his constituents languished, hungry, disoriented, dying, terrorized and homeless. A few black politicians choose to invoke King–or his martyrdom–when their asses have done wrong. Black people have fallen for it, because half or a quarter of King is considered better than no King at all. Black folks usually close ranks around their own at a time of attack. But Nagin is not a black Moses or even a Joshua. He has chosen long ago to side with the moneychangers rather than with the folks. Whenever his bubblehead comes into view on TV, remember that. He’s their monkey. And he can lie like a monkey, too as Wikipedia states:
In an interview with black commentator Tavis Smiley originally broadcast on January 13, 2006, Nagin reportedly said that he has never been a Republican and is a “life-long Democrat.”
As we all know, Nagin was a Republican until it suited his purposes to turn Dem. Now that he’s a Dem, it suits him to play Republican. Nagin even supported Bobby Jindal over Kathleen Blanco, and only gave lip service to Kerry in 2004. At this rate, I’m sure many New Orleans blacks yearn for former police superintendent Richard Pennington, who didn’t kiss anyone’s ass. Eddie Compass was Nagin’s good friend, but incompetent, and because of this, corruption and double dealing returned to New Orleans.
Any way you look at Ray Nagin, blacks and poor lose in New Orleans. His “chocolate statement” therefore, was nothing less than pulling a race card
And for that and for his rank incompetence and piss-poor leadership during Katrina, Ray Nagin deserves whatever he’s gonna get.
Thanks also to duranta on Booman Tribune, whose sources are infinitely better about those movers and shakers and the fall of public housing in New Orleans. Plus she is there at ground zero, so to speak.
The media is focusing on how whites have reacted to his statements.
However, they’re not looking at the whole picture. Nagin is a black face overseeing the obliteration of his entire community for a “New Orleans” as if it will be the New Jerusalem. And all he knows how to do is blame the victims and not his own leadership.
by a lot of the reaction to his remarks. I understand your objections and I thank you, as always, for the diary. What I don’t get is all of the “OMG he said ‘chocolate city!'” stuff. Are those words offensive and I just never knew it? I first saw that phrase (referring to Washington, DC) in an E. Lynn Harris book and didn’t think it was negative. Maybe I missed something.
Or maybe it’s just white people pissed off at the idea that New Orleans should be majority black again. But that seems like a no brainer to this white person. It should be the way it was. The people who lived there should be allowed to return to their homes. Period.
is not a pejorative down black folks’ way. It’s a term of pride. Most whites left the cities for the ‘burbs, although they are by degrees stealing back in again.
D.C., Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit. These are examples of ‘chocolate cities.’
Only problem is that these cities may hardly have any decent services equal to that of the whites. Many don’t own the homes they sleep in, since holding property must turn into tax money. And that is where the pride ends and the anger begins.
Folks have had to help themselves in any way available.
I’m glad I hadn’t misunderstood the term. It did seem to me to be one of pride. And a city – or any community – that is not majority white, is something I value very much. I live in a suburb of DC. I don’t know if my housemates’ children have ever met a black person. They have met Latino men and women who have come in to clean the house or repair things. When I was a small child the only black person I’d ever encountered was the lady who cleaned our house. I thought that black people cleaned houses and white people lived in them. I wonder if these little ones will think the same of Latinos.
Losing any majority black city, would be losing something valuable. The only way to raise up white children who aren’t afraid of other races (or think that their purpose is to clean houses) is to raise them in such a way that they come in contact with people of all colors every day. Once, a friend told me that if I had children it would be immoral to raise them in the city because the crime and schools are bad. I think that such a city would be the only moral place I could raise children.
All the other issues, the economic issues, home ownership, are hard to start off with, but made near impossible by the racism of it. When I was growing up in Louisiana, the conventional wisdom was that you send white people in, have them invest in a community, and then suddenly it will improve. That was the idea behind making the historically black high school a magnet school as part of school integration. That is racist too of course. Offer all the advanced courses ONLY at this school, send all your smart white kids there, and they’ll fix the school and make it good for the black kids!
Fear, fear, fear. Our racism is our problem to solve and not yours, and yet white people are now so afraid to talk about it. Do you know, when I first moved from Louisiana, I was afraid to even mention race, even in an obvious statement of fact. I was riding the metro in DC with a friend and he observed that more black people ride the green line and more white people ride the orange line. I wanted to die of embarrassment that he said that in public. I was used to being accosted by the kids at school if you so much as mentioned race, even in a neutral way. “You prejudiced? Huh? Huh?”
One of these days, I’ll get it all figured out.
The media, as usual, misses the point.
You, as usual, are so on point.
I’ve said before that Nagin is a rank opportunist and someone trying to play both sides in an increasingly fractious class and racial situation.
Yup. Totally.
I think the white business community is going to realize that they really don’t need Nagin anymore to placate anyone–blacks, liberals/progressives, Washington.
Double yup. And Nagin is smart enough to realize that, hence the preaching. And the media, because they fail miserably to get it, plays into his hands by tsk-tsking about how “controversial” his statements are. Dumb asses! This guy is a communication professional–did they really think that this wasn’t planned? Did they really think that he didn’t realize how his statements would be covered?
African-Americans have suffered such mealy-mouthed fools (in greater proportion than other Americans, not exclusively–witness most our electeds) that smart but slithery folks use “being controversial” to seem authentic. In other words, these folks pretend to “tell it like it T-I is” while saying N-O-T-H-I-N-G. See also Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan.
These are not stupid men. Far, far from it. They are extremely sharp and perceptive. And they are good for something every now and again in spite of themselves.
At the end of the day, however, they are in it for themselves–and they don’t care who they have to make a deal with to get what they want. They don’t care about Black folks; they trade off Black folks. So to cloak the obvious, they have to say something “controversial”; they have to say a few things that aren’t said publicly. They know the furious response they’ll receive in turn, and their goal will be accomplished.
It was, however, funny all the way around. Bro. Naggin’s preaching and the white gasps of “how dare he say this on Dr. King’s holiday!” And Hillary talking about the last plantation in NY (Ha! And right alongside Rev. Al)? Hell, I was nice and tickled. I get my laughs any way that I can.
That’s not to be confused with not knowing what’s up.
Besides, Mayor Nagin–silly rabbit–there’s already a Chocolate City!
;>)
From this distance,it appears to me that the strings are being pulled,not only by developers and greedmongers,but insurance companies.Without the wherewithal to rebuild the levees,(good luck with that-we have WOT to fight after all)the most vulnerable parts of the whole area will be ‘uninsurable’,and indeed there is quite a bit of contention about which was the cause of the damage-wind or water.That will go on and on,until people are forced to give up.
Say your home is fully owned- where will the money come from to rebuild? From the feds? HAH.And nobody loans money on ‘uninsurable’ property.Having lived in Galveston,and having paid immense amounts of money for flood/wind insurance,despite being behind a seawall and elevated 12 feet above ground it was about $150 a month.We had the whole shebang,including storm shutters and emergency power.But then,we also had enough money to provide all that.
What can anyone possibly do,if they don’t? Donations are all very well,and I have done so, but next hurricane season is now a few months away.
Will any meaningful levee repair/rebuild be done in that time? Don’t bet on it.
in New Orleans, the absurd division of society according to the amount of chocolate or milk in one’s lineage, of quadroons, and magriffes and odalisques, that sorted itself out into a tripartite caste system: white, gens de coleur, and black, and how that never has gone away, despite the influx of Latin Americans, Asians, and despite the various other flavors who were always there.
But I won’t. In duranta’s diary, I called him the Big Easy’s Arafat.
In this one, I will call him a gens de coleur, and shut up.
What are magriffes and odalisques?
See here and here for odalisques.
But like you, I’m stumped on magriffes.
So many of the old time racial terms have become mass market perfumes that I am sure I am not the only one who gets confused.
is what Nagin is. And he is doing what a lot of black folks would not do, selling folks down the river, including his own gens de couleur.
Some of those same gens de couleur also owned slaves and were just as cruel as whites. And held family members to prepare for the day that they could free them. Unfortunately, the slaveholding Americans stepped in to stop that kind of thing, fearing too many Latino and French precedents rolling into their legal system.
Nagin is just having too much fun with all of this. He loves it. He is a very big, big shot now. He’s has the power to embarass important people,like Bush and his “staff”….. of course he doesn’t do that ….and they in return curry his favor on a personal, not a city wide level. It all about ME.
He looks so self satisfied, like he just had a sip of fine wine with the delicious appetizer still fresh in his mouth as he gets ready to recieve yet another audience of supplicants with questions.
Nagin is obviously suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome. Cut him a little slack.
He needs to be replaced (as should the governor) with people who are not so emotionally invested in the disaster. This is not an attack on their past performance or political philosophies, just an observation that those who have suffered through a catastrophe are too stressed to be completely effective.
Not when he went to the Caribbean for a vacation while people were drying out.
I’m not cutting any slack with anybody lying and puffing themselves up as some kind of spokesperson for black folks when he hasn’t delivered.