Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Aint much chocolate in NOLA.


As I was reading through Reuters today, I came on an article about New Orleans and how the black population is not coming back. After looking at the picture above, can you blame them. Look at that picture. Study it. What does it remind you of? Mogadishu maybe? A remote corner of Chad maybe? It sure as hell doesn't make you think New Orleans, LA, in the USA. Some of us remember when Ray Nagin let loose his chocolate line last year, for those who forgot...
On Martin Luther King Day last year, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin famously said his city would "be chocolate at the end of the day," a remark meant to encourage African Americans to return after Hurricane Katrina.

Well it aint happenin. As a country, we are watching something that was truely unique to this country dissappear. The culture that people came from all over the world to appreciate is no longer going to be there. That saddens me. It is a tragedy that this rcih part of our history and culture is slipping away and there is nothing anyone will do about it. Its been a year for crying out loud and it still looks like a 3rd world country down there. For the stats, it reads like this...
New Orleans was 67 percent African American before Katrina and 28 percent white. Now, in a city with less than half the previous population, blacks account for 47 percent and whites 43 percent.

And while those numbers are easily manipulated, it doesn't really paint the whole picture. Black folks are not returning to NOLA cause they don't see anyone helping them out. And don't give me that crap about how no one helped you out when your house suffered wind damage in that tropical storm you can't even name. This is completly different. A truly brutal storm, giant flood, and an environmental nightmare to clean up, all wrapped in the felling that it could happen again next year. Maybe thats why
Signs of a sluggish recovery are everywhere, 16 months after Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast, burst its protective levees and flooded 80 percent of the city.

Nowhere is it slower than in predominantly black neighborhoods like the Lower Ninth Ward, where workers are still tearing down homes destroyed by a wave of water. Gentilly, a middle class black area, is also barren.

Meanwhile, life in the mostly white Uptown district has returned to normal and shows few signs of storm destruction.

Shit like that will piss a brother off if hes just tryin to get a roof over his and his families head. When your dirt poor and shit like this happens to you, you need help to recover. While that may go against much of what Republicans believe as a political philosophy, wheres the fucking dignity in helping out another human being? Give these people some money to fix this shit. Its about repairing infastructure, water lines, gas lines, electric lines and streets. Services people. These guys paid taxes, they are entitled to the services needed to live a life.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just because it could very well happen again is one good reason to try and relocate somewhere else.
Same with all the areas in this country that are subject to Mother natures rath. I live in a flood plane and because of that I pay a little over $1000 dollars a year in flood insurance. I can imagine that many people in New Orleans could not afford and did not have flood insurance, except the upper crust.
Be interesting to know where all the money actually went. Lord there must have been Billions and billions sent down there through government agencys and private donations.
I'm willing to bet they can't account for 50% of it!

Anonymous said...

wrath

Anonymous said...

Me thinks they found a better gig somewhere else???

Anonymous said...

The real shitty point here though is that that photo is what the 9th Ward looked like even before the hurricane. Neglecting poverty is, unfortunately, not exactly a post-Katrina development in Louisiana.

My bro went to Tulane and loves the Louisiana culture, but at the same time there are aspects of it that are maddeningly f'd up.