Nagin calls for rebuilding 'chocolate' New Orleans

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MissVelvetDress_75

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hmm

Not sure what to think about his comments.

[q]Nagin calls for rebuilding 'chocolate' New Orleans
Black majority city 'the way God wants it to be'

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Mayor Ray Nagin on Monday called for the rebuilding of a "chocolate New Orleans" that maintains the city's black majority, saying, "You can't have New Orleans no other way."

"I don't care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day," Nagin said in a Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech. "This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be."

Uptown is a reference to a mostly white part of the city.

Pressed later to explain his comments, Nagin, who is black, told CNN affiliate WDSU-TV that he was referring to creation of a racially diverse city in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, insisting that his remarks were not divisive.

"How do you make chocolate? You take dark chocolate, you mix it with white milk, and it becomes a delicious drink. That is the chocolate I am talking about," he said.

"New Orleans was a chocolate city before Katrina. It is going to be a chocolate city after. How is that divisive? It is white and black working together, coming together and making something special."

Before Hurricane Katrina inundated the city with floodwaters in August, forcing its residents to evacuate, about two-thirds of New Orleans' population of 485,000 was black.

However, the worst of the flooding was in mostly black areas that remain largely uninhabitable, while residents in mostly white areas that were less badly damaged have been able to return home -- prompting speculation that the much-smaller city could end up with a white majority if large numbers of black evacuees do not return.

Black residents and political leaders have complained about the slow pace of recovery in mostly black areas compared to mostly white areas such as Uptown and the French Quarter, where services have been restored and life has returned to a semblance of normal.

In his speech, Nagin also said "God is mad at America," in part because he does not approve "of us being in Iraq under false pretenses."

"He is sending hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it is destroying and putting stress on this country," Nagin said.

He said God is "upset at black America also."

"We are not taking care of ourselves. We are not taking care of our women, and we are not taking care of our children when you have a community where 70 percent of its children are being born to one parent."

Nagin, first elected in 2002, had been due to come up for re-election next month. However, state officials postponed the city election until April because of the disruptions caused by Katrina.



Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/01/17/nagin.city/index.html
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New Orleans politics, generally speaking, is pretty yucky stuff. Louisiana is one of those states, like my state, Alabama, that always has pretty hopeless politics. It's frustrating.
 
Ray Nagin is probably a great guy - he may even be a great mayor, I don't know - but he really needs to either: a) hire a speech writer, or b) hire a BETTER speech writer.

Surely there's a less, um... 'has-he-lost-his-mind!?!' type of way to make the point he's trying to make. :huh:
 
^Oh, I'd suggest the same for those 'others' as well. :yes: Mr. Nagin just seems to have a plethora of really out-there comments that he's made to the media. Then again, the gentleman's been under a lot of stress - maybe he's doing better than anyone else would in that situation. :shrug:

I just hate to see the plight of New Orleans and Nagin's seemingly honorable plan for cooperation amongst the races during rebuilding being overshadowed instead by a bunch of raised eyebrows & insinuations that he's not fit to run the city, much less rebuild it. Unfortunately, though, he tends to make an easy target of himself over & over.
 
refering to a city as "chocolate" has been around for decades -- DC is consistently refered to as "the chocolate city" due to it's nearly 70% african-american population.

it's also another reason why Congress does it's best to keep residents of DC disenfranchised. Congressional representation from DC would nearly always be Democratic, so what's the big deal about keeping hundreds of thousands of black people with fewer rights than people living in, say, Kirkuk.
 
this would be considered racism if you substitute black with white.

i really don't understand why such comments are made in the first place.
 
he's an idiot and this isn't the first thing that tipped me off. and verte is right about the government in louisiana, mississippi, even alabama and georgia. if any of you think corruption is a republican issue you have not seen the democratic parties in some of these southern cities, it's disgusting and rampant and a lot of them don't even try to hide it. i think shirley franklin did a bit to clean up atlanta, but i know new orleans is one of the worst places for that and i bet it contributed to the incompetence on the local level during katrina.

anyway....back to his comments. that's racism and i don't buy his thing about milk and dark chocolate...maybe if he'd said he wants to make it a "milk chocolate city," just maybe.

:wink:
 
I don't think there's much fear of Katrina refugees overthrowing "milky America." So you can all breathe a sigh of relief right now.

"Dark chocolate" New Orleans, however, is afraid that the "milk" isn't going to rebuild their portion of the city, because we all know how attractive the idea of pushing all the poor people out of cities. They have the most to lose in this scenario.

Melon
 
VertigoGal said:
Umm if they are hoping to attract white investors to rebuild as you're suggesting, how does proclaiming a "chocolate city" help that goal?

Do you really think a bunch of multimillionaire developers are going to be discouraged by meaningless rhetoric? Where there's money to be made, nothing will stand in their way. And a bunch of powerless, poor black people are the last thing going to stand in their way.

This is rhetoric of despair and desperation, and, for that reason, I feel sorry for these people. They have no means to affect change, and all the "milky" vultures here cackle around to pick at their figurative corpses.

Rest assured, white people have had (and continue to have) nothing to worry about. America continues to be in their iron grip. And, really, if you really need to be constantly afraid of something (as is tradition for white Americans all the way back to the original settlers), try being afraid of someone who can actually bite back.

(And, of course, I'm not referring to you specifically.)

Melon
 
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Here's a question, and I'll just throw it out there.

When you live in a country that looks like this:

http://www.censusscope.org/us/map_nhblack.html

Is it OK to want and surround yourself with a certain culture in order not to have it die out? When you are still very much misrepresented, statistically not given the same chances, and very much oppressed in certain ways in your country is it so wrong to want and create communities steeped in your own culture?

Is it racism or preservation, or something else?
 
melon said:


Do you really think a bunch of multimillionaire developers are going to be discouraged by meaningless rhetoric? Where there's money to be made, nothing will stand in their way. And a bunch of powerless, poor black people are the last thing going to stand in their way.

This is rhetoric of despair and desperation, and, for that reason, I feel sorry for these people. They have no means to affect change, and all the "milky" vultures here cackle around to pick at their figurative corpses.

Rest assured, white people have had (and continue to have) nothing to worry about. America continues to be in their iron grip. And, really, if you really need to be constantly afraid of something (as is tradition for white Americans all the way back to the original settlers), try being afraid of someone who can actually bite back.



i understand what you're saying, but double standards help noone.

it's no secret black people have historically gotten the short end of the stick from whites in america (to put it VERY mildly), but what if my conservative town's mayor said something like "we're going to make this a heterosexual haven again" after a hypothetical tornado ripped it apart?

that wouldn't be right at all. without sounding too simple, people are people - whatever their race/religion/sexual orientation, etc.

i 7ust don't understand why people like nagin have to talk the way they do.
 
BonoVoxSupastar said:

wow. I live in a place with a higher % of non-white (well, not HIGH, but higher than 80% of the rest of the country), but then I looked at one of the other maps, and it also has a big dot on my area that says it's in the highest group of racial segregation.

Those visuals are very helpful and eye-opening. We have a long way to go....
 
Zoomerang96 said:


but what if my conservative town's mayor said something like "we're going to make this a heterosexual haven again" after a hypothetical tornado ripped it apart?


Well if it was one of the few cities left steeped in heterosexual culture and history then they may have a point...

I don't know.
 
melon said:

And a bunch of powerless, poor black people are the last thing going to stand in their way.

I've lived in New Orleans, I've lived in Dallas. New Orleans was a giant asshole of city to live in from day to day. A horrid place. And Dallas, Murder-City USA, ain't the shining mark in the US. But Jesus, I'd give a nut never to have to live in NO again. Do you even realise how many people from NO that were moved/forced into Texas, and now LOVE Texas because it is so much better than living in NO? I'm not a rich person and have encountered dozens of people from NO that love Texas and never want to leave now.

New Orleans wasn't great at all. A terrible city.
 
theblazer said:


I've lived in New Orleans, I've lived in Dallas. New Orleans was a giant asshole of city to live in from day to day. A horrid place. And Dallas, Murder-City USA, ain't the shining mark in the US. But Jesus, I'd give a nut never to have to live in NO again. Do you even realise how many people from NO that were moved/forced into Texas, and now LOVE Texas because it is so much better than living in NO? I'm not a rich person and have encountered dozens of people from NO that love Texas and never want to leave now.

New Orleans wasn't great at all. A terrible city.

First of all Dallas is not the "murder-city usa", far from it. Depending on what source you look at, DC is the highest and at least a dozen rank higher than Dallas(like I said depends on source, but none rank Dallas as the highest).

Secondly, I have family and many friends who love NO. They all admit there were some horrible aspects of the city, but they all were privelaged enough to decide whether to move back or not. They all decided to move back.
 
BonoVoxSupastar said:


First of all Dallas is not the "murder-city usa", far from it.



hahha, you have no god damn idea what you're talking about. "Far from it?" Yeah, not even close. Violent Crimes and Dallas are hand in hand.


Secondly, I have family and many friends who love NO. They all admit there were some horrible aspects of the city, but they all were privelaged enough to decide whether to move back or not. They all decided to move back.

Wow, I have many family and friends that would rather die then go back to NO. Of course, those I know aren't "privelaged" so I guess the people you talk about weren't part of Nagin's "Chocolate" NO.
 
theblazer said:



hahha, you have no god damn idea what you're talking about. "Far from it?" Yeah, not even close. Violent Crimes and Dallas are hand in hand.

Well let's see I lived their for 6 years of my life and I have statistics on my side.

The highest of all polls I've seen is number 11(that wasn't per capita). That's far from "murder-city usa".

But yeah I have no idea what I'm talking about, right?:|
 
BonoVoxSupastar said:


Well let's see I lived their for 6 years of my life and I have statistics on my side.

The highest of all polls I've seen is number 11(that wasn't per capita). That's far from "murder-city usa".

But yeah I have no idea what I'm talking about, right?:|

11 murders? There were 248 in 2004, almost 4 times the national average per capita. NO had 268, but adjusted for population, that was 10 times the national average per capita. That's worse than Wash. DC, LA, Detroit, St Louis, Gary IN, New York, Chicago...(but not Camden, NJ)

Never been to either city so I don't feel one way or the other, but that's just what the data says.
 
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theblazer said:
I've lived in New Orleans, I've lived in Dallas. New Orleans was a giant asshole of city to live in from day to day. A horrid place. And Dallas, Murder-City USA, ain't the shining mark in the US. But Jesus, I'd give a nut never to have to live in NO again. Do you even realise how many people from NO that were moved/forced into Texas, and now LOVE Texas because it is so much better than living in NO? I'm not a rich person and have encountered dozens of people from NO that love Texas and never want to leave now.

New Orleans wasn't great at all. A terrible city.

I've lived relatively close to Detroit nearly all of my life, and New Orleans and Detroit vacillated between being the poorest cities in America. At least New Orleans has the French Quarter; Detroit has nothing at all.

But that's besides the point. I will not doubt that New Orleans was a hole, and it's a pity that the American attitude towards urban renewal is to wait to rebuild after a natural disaster. Beyond that, we will leave a city rot for eternity (and such will be the fate of Detroit, since no large-scale natural disasters will ever affect this city).

However, having also lived in a city with heavy urban renewal, Boston, I know, first-hand, its double-edged sword. As rebuilding projects happen, property values skyrocket, property taxes go up, and poorer people lose out. Now it's different if they own their own homes, granted, because then they can cash in on the higher property values. However, poor people tend to rent (as was the case with Boston), so with higher monthly rent, the poor people get pushed out.

Now for these people who feel as if New Orleans is their home, they have very reasonable fears to believe that there is going to be no place for them in a rebuilding of the city. But if they are to have any consolation, considering the incompetance and short-sightedness of the Bush Administration, they'll likely be too cheap to build the levees to sufficient standards (as seems to already be the case) and New Orleans will be destroyed again.

Melon
 
Zoomerang96 said:
i understand what you're saying, but double standards help noone.

it's no secret black people have historically gotten the short end of the stick from whites in america (to put it VERY mildly), but what if my conservative town's mayor said something like "we're going to make this a heterosexual haven again" after a hypothetical tornado ripped it apart?

that wouldn't be right at all. without sounding too simple, people are people - whatever their race/religion/sexual orientation, etc.

i 7ust don't understand why people like nagin have to talk the way they do.

I tend to get angrier when white people spout bigotry, mainly because they have the power to enshrine their bigotry into law. And, considering all these "Defense of Marriage Acts," they certainly do have that power. In this situation, however, they don't have the power or the means to hurt white people. So I guess that's why I tend to pity these people more than I'm disgusted by their rhetoric.

Melon
 
BonoVoxSupastar said:


Well if it was one of the few cities left steeped in heterosexual culture and history then they may have a point...

I don't know.

I think it would be a stretch to validate the idea in any respect.
 
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