Judge Orders Bush Administration to Resume Paying for Katrina Housing

[Nova]

Sorry Nova. I don't care about their excuses.

These aren't "their" excuses. These are demonstrable influences.

What's your explanation? Possession by old, French demons?

 

[2sisters]

I have a question about that....Was it considered "racism" when Mayor Nagin announced he wanted to make NO a "Chocolate City" again? I kinda took offense to that.... I mean it didn't cause me mental anguish that would have caused me to sue but I didn't care much for the comment ~ Had that been acceptable if the tables were turned on that comment?

I found it completley racist. What I got out of it was no whites, asians, latinos or any others allowed. Only blacks. Of course he may have meant ssomething else entirley. He is a giant moron. He could care less about the blacks in New Orleans.

 

[windovervocalcords]

Where are you all getting the race thing? i reread this thread and there was no mention of color on here except in something I posted. When are people going to take responsibilty for their actions and lives and quit whining about race. Wind if your friend left over racism then so be it, she was obvioulsy reading into things. I cannot name one example of racism against blacks on this website. Racism does exist and it isn't just against blacks. Don't fool yourself into thinking it is.

Wind- apology accepted over the housewife comment, my apologies for calling you an upperclass liberal.

I am a liberal so you don't have to apologize for calling me one.
No one would ever mistake me for upper class in the past, now or likely in the future.

 

[Nova]

Where are you all getting the race thing? i reread this thread and there was no mention of color on here except in something I posted. When are people going to take responsibilty for their actions and lives and quit whining about race. Wind if your friend left over racism then so be it, she was obvioulsy reading into things. I cannot name one example of racism against blacks on this website. Racism does exist and it isn't just against blacks. Don't fool yourself into thinking it is.

Wind- apology accepted over the housewife comment, my apologies for calling you an upperclass liberal.

It is no secret that Katrina hit the black community in NO disproportionately hard.

If you haven't seen examples of racism at WS, you aren't reading carefully. That isn't to say all or even most posters are racists, nor that what racist posts do survive are particularly vicious. But let's don't put our heads in the sand.

 

[Nova]

I have a question about that....Was it considered "racism" when Mayor Nagin announced he wanted to make NO a "Chocolate City" again? I kinda took offense to that.... I mean it didn't cause me mental anguish that would have caused me to sue but I didn't care much for the comment ~ Had it been acceptable if the tables were turned on that comment?

He might well have used a better phrase. But many traditional, urban black communities have been destroyed for various reasons (including well-intended but ill-conceived, urban renewal projects). Often the result is gentrified neighborhoods that poor and lower middle-class blacks can no longer afford.

Nagin was saying he wants longtime NO residents to be able to return to their rebuilt neighborhoods, not remain dispersed around the country. Yes, most of those residents were black.

 

[Jeana (DP)]

On Aug. 29, 2005, New Orleans was on track to finish the year as the deadliest city in America, again. Crime had become atomized here--it was part of the culture, the air, the dark humor of the place. Under normal circumstances, criminologists believe, there are two ways to stop a cycle of gang violence: either dismantle the gangs or disrupt their business. In New Orleans, both happened overnight. Hurricane Katrina sundered what no man could, sending the criminals fleeing in all directions. So now there was a mystery: What would happen next? What would become of the criminal population when stripped of its neighborhood affiliations, its drug suppliers and a well-worn black-market infrastructure? This is a story about what happened to the gangs of New Orleans. But it is also a story about a culture of killing and what it takes to change it.

New Orleans was a disaster site before Katrina. So far that year, 202 people had been murdered. Computer models predicted that about 107 more were going to be killed before the year was out. "We were watching the lid come off," says Peter Scharf, a University of New Orleans criminologist. At that rate, not only would New Orleans have once again ranked as deadlier than New York City or Los Angeles, but it would also have been so much more violent that it really belonged in another country altogether. By the time Katrina hit, most law-enforcement types in the city had come to an unpleasant conclusion: no amount of arrests would stanch the murder rate. Somewhere along the way, despite the best efforts of techno-cop Chief Richard Pennington in the 1990s, despite tens of thousands of arrests for drug and quality-of-life crimes, violence had become normalized.

more at:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1194016,00.html

 

[windovervocalcords]

I found it completley racist. What I got out of it was no whites, asians, latinos or any others allowed. Only blacks. Of course he may have meant ssomething else entirley. He is a giant moron. He could care less about the blacks in New Orleans.

Before dealing with the white politician/vanilla city analogy, let's quickly examine a few simple reasons why Nagin's remarks fail the test of racism. First, there is nothing to suggest that his comment about New Orleans retaining its black majority portended a dislike of whites, let alone plans to keep them out. In fact, if we simply examine Nagin's own personal history -- which has been obscured by many on the right since Katrina who have tried to charge him with being a liberal black Democrat -- we would immediately recognize the absurdity of the charge. Nagin owes his political career not to New Orleans' blacks, but New Orleans' white folks. It was whites who voted for him, at a rate of nearly ninety percent, while blacks only supported him at a rate of forty-two percent, preferring instead the city's chief of police (which itself says something: black folks in a city with a history of police brutality preferring the cop to this guy).

Nagin has always been, in the eyes of most black New Orleanians, pretty vanilla: he was a corporate vice-President, a supporter of President Bush, and a lifelong Republican prior to changing parties right before the Mayoral race.

Secondly, given the ways in which displaced blacks especially have been struggling to return -- getting the run-around with insurance payments, or dealing with landlords seeking to evict them (or jacking up rents to a point where they can't afford to return) -- one can safely intuit that all Nagin was doing was trying to reassure folks that they were wanted back and wouldn't be prevented from re-entering the city.

And finally, Nagin's remarks were less about demography per se, than an attempt to speak to the cultural heritage of the town, and the desire to retain the African and Afro-Caribbean flavor of one of the world's most celebrated cities. Fact is, culturally speaking, New Orleans is what New Orleans is, because of the chocolate to which Nagin referred. True enough, many others have contributed to the unique gumbo that is New Orleans, but can anyone seriously doubt that the predominant flavor in that gumbo has been that inspired by the city's black community? If so, then you've never lived there or spent much time in the city (and no, pissing on the street during Mardi Gras or drinking a badly-made Hurricane at Pat O'Brian's doesn't count).

If the city loses its black cultural core (which is not out of the question if the black majority doesn't or is unable to return), then indeed New Orleans itself will cease to exist, as we know it. That is surely what Nagin was saying, and it is simply impossible to think that mentioning the black cultural core of the city and demanding that it will and should be retained is racist: doing so fits no definition of racism anywhere, in any dictionary, on the planet.
So for a politician to suggest that a previously brown city should remain majority "chocolate" is merely to demand that those who had always been willing to stay and make the town their home, should be able to remain there and not be run off in the name of gentrification, commercial development or urban renewal. It is to demand the eradication of barriers for those blacks who otherwise might have a hard time returning, not to call for the erection of barriers to whites--barriers that have never existed in the first place, and which there would be no power to impose in any event (quite unlike the barriers that have been set up to block access for the black and brown).

In short, to call for a vanilla majority is to call for the perpetuation of obstacles to persons of color, while to call for a chocolate majority in a place such as New Orleans is to call merely for the continuation of access and the opportunity for black folks to live there. Is that too much to ask?

Funny how Nagin's comments simply calling for the retention of a chocolate New Orleans bring down calls of racism upon his head, while the very real and active planning of the city's white elite -- people like Joe Cannizaro and Jimmy Reiss -- to actually change it to a majority white town, elicits no attention or condemnation whatsoever from white folks. In other words, talking about blacks being able to come back and make up the majority is racist, while actually engaging in ethnic cleansing -- by demolishing black neighborhoods like the lower ninth ward, the Treme, or New Orleans East as many want to do -- is seen as legitimate economic development policy.

It's also interesting that whites chose the "chocolate city" part of Nagin's speech, delivered on MLK day, as the portion deserving condemnation as racist, rather than the next part--the part in which Nagin said that Katrina was God's wrath, brought on by the sinful ways of black folks, what with their crime rates, out-of-wedlock childbirths and general wickedness.


http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9620

 

[2sisters]

It is no secret that Katrina hit the black community in NO disproportionately hard.

If you haven't seen examples of racism at WS, you aren't reading carefully. That isn't to say all or even most posters are racists, nor that what racist posts do survive are particularly vicious. But let's don't put our heads in the sand.

Are you kidding me? you are kidding right? It hit blacks disproportionately hard?!?
Blacks didn't suffer more than any other race. you have no idea what you are talking about. The suffering and loss was felt by all races equally. I do not have the demographics but St. Bernard and Plaqumines the majority of people are non black. Harrison county MS I think has a pretty even number, hancock I would say is majority white. In the end it all evens out.

 

[narlacat]

They need to be out of them and in homes. Hve you seen those things? People deserve better than to live in a camper for years. I would like to see more help getting people back home intead of saying a FEMA trailer is ok. They aren't ok, sure it's better that being homeless but this is America and the citizens here don't deserve to live in a travel trailer the size of a minivan.

They mightn't deserve it but America is well known for it's trailer parks ..
Better than living on the street..another thing that seems to happen alot in American cities....if you're in a trailer park, you're doing alot better than some...

 

[2sisters]

There's something wrong with her.........I'm having a de ja vu, sure I've said that before....lol

something wrong with me? explain please.

 

[windovervocalcords]

something wrong with me?

narla-

You post in the wrong place?

 

[czechmate7]

He might well have used a better phrase. But many traditional, urban black communities have been destroyed for various reasons (including well-intended but ill-conceived, urban renewal projects). Often the result is gentrified neighborhoods that poor and lower middle-class blacks can no longer afford.

Nagin was saying he wants longtime NO residents to be able to return to their rebuilt neighborhoods, not remain dispersed around the country. Yes, most of those residents were black.

So, what you are saying is was perfectly acceptable for him to make that racist remark?? The NAACP would have had someones tale end if that comment would have gone the other way. Any doubts?
I go to NO every other weekend...the African American population is coming back. There is no need for comments either way vanilla or chocolate.

 

[Jeana (DP)]

He might well have used a better phrase. But many traditional, urban black communities have been destroyed for various reasons (including well-intended but ill-conceived, urban renewal projects). Often the result is gentrified neighborhoods that poor and lower middle-class blacks can no longer afford.

Nagin was saying he wants longtime NO residents to be able to return to their rebuilt neighborhoods, not remain dispersed around the country. Yes, most of those residents were black.

I agree with him. With the crime rate being the highest in the nation BEFORE Katrina, I think all of the criminals should return to the place they came from and leave the other neighborhoods that have graciously accepted them.

 

[windovervocalcords]

I agree with him. With the crime rate being the highest in the nation BEFORE Katrina, I think all of the criminals should return to the place they came from and leave the other neighborhoods that have graciously accepted them.

Nagin was not saying he wanted the criminals to return, he said the residents.

Does Barbara Bush's sentiment describe yours?

 

[Nova]

So, what you are saying is was perfectly acceptable for him to make that racist remark?? The NAACP would have had someones tale end if that comment would have gone the other way. Any doubts?
I go to NO every other weekend...the African American population is coming back. There is no need for comments either way vanilla or chocolate.

Read wind's cite above. It explains it perfectly well.

NO was justly famed for its African-American culture and Nagin wants to revive that. (And no, a minority wanting to preserve its culture is not the same as the majority wanting to keep minority culture out.)

The "chocolate city" remark was unfortunate. Obviously so, since some folks have trouble understanding it.

 

[Nova]

Are you kidding me? you are kidding right? It hit blacks disproportionately hard?!?
Blacks didn't suffer more than any other race. you have no idea what you are talking about. The suffering and loss was felt by all races equally. I do not have the demographics but St. Bernard and Plaqumines the majority of people are non black. Harrison county MS I think has a pretty even number, hancock I would say is majority white. In the end it all evens out.

I said "black community." I never said the storm sought out black individuals to persecute instead of white ones.

 

[GonzoReiter]

It is no secret that Katrina hit the black community in NO disproportionately hard.

If you haven't seen examples of racism at WS, you aren't reading carefully. That isn't to say all or even most posters are racists, nor that what racist posts do survive are particularly vicious. But let's don't put our heads in the sand.

we've been down this road here, already

(that's just one example)

 

[Jeana (DP)]

Nagin was not saying he wanted the criminals to return, he said the residents.

And the difference is???? The gangs lived there and now they're committing crimes elsewhere. Nagin wants the other cities to have to live with his criminals? That makes sense from what I've heard of Nagin.

 

[Nova]

we've been down this road here, already

(that's just one example)

And so we have. With some of the same posters. :sigh:

 

[narlacat]

narla-

You post in the wrong place?

Yep!

Hit copy and paste and the wrong thing came out..................:banghead:

Just ignore that!