I am not even remotely interested in visiting a "whiter" New Orleans

[JanMichael]

The very thought of an ethnically cleansed city in the US is too upsetting to even think about.

This is Stephanie, not Michael....I have been there several times, and part of what I loved about NO was the racial diversity---between the Cajons (did I spell that right?), and the African Americans, and the rest (I met Jamaicans too....can't remember any other countries right now...to early)--that is where the charm of NO came from.

I am sickened to think of new condos and crap...I don't even want to see it, much less participate in the tourist business there.

I wish Michael had seen NO when it was great; it's just going to be downhill for that city now.

Disgusting.

[liberal N proud]

1. The black culture was an integral part of New Orleans

The soul of the city would be gone if the blacks are not allowed to live in the city.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

5. And another thing....

I was just thinking about the attempt to white bread the rebuilding of the city.

They might as well just do what they have done with the football bowl games. Assign it a corporate title.

Like: Nokia New Orleans. .... WalMart French Quarter


yuk

[StopTheMorans]

10. It's a jump to conclusions mat!

you see, there would be different kinds of conclusions written on it, and you'd JUMP to them!

[TallahasseeGrannie]

2. What I envision

is a souless N.O.

How pathetic. One of the unique things about N.O. is not just the black population, it is the intermixing of the population.

I don't think they can keep that down. N.O. is more a state of mind than a place.

[ret5hd]

3. My Prediction:

The Future of New Orleans...

The flooded houses of the poor will be bulldozed. a 2 foot layer of clay will be layed on top, sealing the worst of the poisons in, then a few feet of soil. New housing will be built, but NOT for the poor.

NO will be turned into a mixture of a whitebread playground and "disneyland". The poor service workers will be bussed 50-70 miles daily like in Vail, CO.

A few black trumpet, sax, trombone players will be hired to amuse the tourists as they walk through "A Taste of Old Orleans (tm)" in the French Quarter.

Once a year in Feb or March a staged parade will be held, complete with floats (sponsored by nike and coke), paid revelers dressed extravagantly, a few paid cross-dressers (just raunchy enough to tittilate the crowd, but polite enough to make everything "family friendly") and a few beads thrown from the floats to the polite orderly crowds lined on the sidewalks.

i hope i'm wrong...but that's the way i see it.

[ComerPerro]

6. Terrifying, but very Republican and suburban

Of course, to make it truly a white Republican paradise, they will have to have a sleazy district somewhere, where the good Republican "family men" can leave their wives for a few hours, have sex with an underage prostitute, participate in some gambling and maybe watch a dogfight, and score some cocaine.

[Lisa]

24. you mean like the A Little Too Much Fun Sometimes (tm) area?

[Lisa]

23. and they will be smiling, clean-cut, perky musicians ...

Saying "thank you sir!" and "bless you ma'am!" when you throw a penny into their caps.

None of those sleazy, unsanitary "jazz types" with the dreadful names -- "Blind Lemon" or "Limping Orange", or whatever.

[Coexist]

4. I agree - if I want to visit a boring suburb near the water,

I'll stay in Florida

[tanyev]

7. After a few years, they will start to wonder why tourism never

returned to pre-Katrina levels. They will, of course, blame it on the hurricane and come up with a slick new marketing campaign trumpeting the virtues of the NEW New Orleans. It's clean! It's safe! Oh, they may lure a few people away from Branson who never before wanted to visit NO, but it will never be the same and they will never understand why.

[mzteris]

8. don't worry

they'll still allow plenty of "them" into the city for servanthood and entertainment purposes, doncha know.

[MountainLaurel]

9. But they'll ship them out

At the end of their shifts, like some of the Caribbean island resorts do.

[tlsmith1963]

11. I Don't Want it Changed, Either

NO is a unique part of America. I want it to stay that way. Why does everything have to be boring, upper-class, white & conservative? Sort of like what my town (Santee, CA.) has become.

Tammy

[mondo joe]

12. I keep saying we'll have Disneyorleans. The real city is gone along with

the people who made it.

[elehhhhna]

13. If they could reduce the barf smell in Vieux Carre...

THAT would be a welcome accomplishment.

Doubt it's black people barfing all over the curbs & alleys.

I just want to go back & hear the Zydeco Hellraisers on Bourbon Street. Rocking out on a accordian! Who knew? AH-eyyyyyyyy.

[Silverhair]

14. Businesses are LEAVING New Orleans.

Katrina has killed the city. Realize that !! You are NOT going to see a DisneyOrleans because the corporations simply will not want to invest in a city that is a proven disaster waiting for the next big hurricane to destroy it again.

The only thing you will see there will be the things that have to be there, and even those will be slowly moved. New port investments will likely go above Baton Rouge. (Yes, ocean going ships can go that far, and further up the Mississippi.)

Industries that do build there will likely put their own levees around their facility, just in case the gov't one is breeched again. And their own pumps too.

[smoogatz]

15. What made New Orleans New Orleans

Was its creole culture--that mix of French and African influences. It's in the food, the music and the atmosphere--it's the heart and soul of N'awlins as we knew it. Without a vibrant black community, New Orleans will turn into NOLA-Disney--bland, safe, fake and utterly uninteresting: Epcot Center with titty bars.

[AValdoux]

16. From the beginning of this..

.. I've said get ready for the next Branson. Andy Willliams & Yakoff Smirnoff are looking to relocate right now. Don't forget the Oak Ridge Boys. I think they will probably relocate the Precious Moments Museum also.

AValdoux

[JanMichael]

22. If that Precious Moments museum is moved

I will have to eat Rolaids for a week.

[Generic Other]

17. And who's the leader of the band?

Did someone say Disneyfuckation?

[MildyRules]

18. It's

Cajuns, but you were close.

[pitohui]

19. don't be so panicked, the city won't be ethnically cleansed

there is indeed much diversity in new orleans, however, the cajuns live in acadiana not new orleans

are you thinking of the creoles, there are white creoles in new orleans as well as black creoles

there was a large vietnamese area in the east, not sure how they fared, i know they have been hard hit elsewhere because of the destruction of the shrimping industry from biloxi to cameron

the v. unique "mardi gras indians" who are the descended of black slaves who escaped & received help from natives have already said that they are planning this yr's costumes & planning to return

there will be condos -- there will always be condos, always have been, heck, my folks have a condo -- but the ppl will return

there is a reason why nagin and fema had to stand down & open up the city before the sewer was back on, ppl were ready to riot if they weren't going to be allowed back to see their homes & either get some closure or start rebuilding

it is NOT going to be downhill for the city, don't be so negative, the ppl are coming back & they are going to rebuild

the city of kobe, which i believe is much larger than new orleans, was destroyed in 1995, and they have already rebuilt it, if japanese can do it, why not americans

we can do this

don't lose hope

it isn't the right time for visitors yet but you and yours will be able to enjoy new orleans & its ppl again

based on interviews, many evacuees did say that they would be happy to relocate in houston or baton rouge, but evacuees interviewed in distant locations such as utah or wisconsin have already said they plan to return to new orleans, the funniest interview i read was the evacuee who put down her foot and said she had never heard of arkansas before & nice as the people had been she certainly didn't plan to remain there (arkansas is north of louisiana, but north louisiana and arkansas are a different world from the gulf coast)

ppl will come home

the orleans parish public officials, who are voted into office, are aware that their constituents have been scattered, do you really think they want to sit on their hands & turn the city over to the GOP, i don't think so

give ppl credit, it's too soon to panic & declare new orleans lost to the democrats or to the people

[MildyRules]

20. Actually, "Creoles"

are neither Black nor White. The term has come to mean many things to many people over the years. But as a Creole, I don't consider myself a member of either group.

[graywarrior]

21. They'll have to change New Oleans to Neo-Con Orleans

But I feel the same...NO will have lost its soul without the people who spiritually belong there.

[TahitiNut]

29. Or, even more symbolically, "New Whoreleans"

... in honor of the corporatist whores that are selling this nation's soul and worshipping Mammon.

[sandnsea]

25. NO may end up with "cajones", but you meant Cajuns

And they won't be going anywhere. But I do think NO won't be NO without African Americans, it's kind of half the culture and all.

It will also be interesting to see what happens when illegals pour in to supply the cheap labor and see where the gentrifiers put them.

[opstachuck]

26. not sure about that

alot of us that call new orleans home left because it was in tatters socially (crime, drugs, etc.) and economically (few jobs). i personally view this as an opportunity to rebuild in a way that will attract people to new orleans for something besides a couple drunken nights in the quarter. i'm sure the tourists had a great time there, but most were oblivious to the horrendous conditions that the poor were living in. i honestly don't think it could've gotten worse.

but now, i just don't know. it's extremely difficult to deal with this because a major problem is that the public school system in new orleans has to be one of the worst in the country. you only send your kids there as a last resort (unless your smart enough to get into one of the very few magnet schools - i only knew of one). so you have this huge uneducated poor population, which doesn't do much to attract businesses to the area. without the revenue from tax to support the poor class, they just continue to suffer. you rarely meet a person in new orleans who hasn't been a victim of crime. a friend of our family, a 71 year old woman was shot and killed on her front lawn in a "nice" part of town.

i guess the point of this rambling is just to say that all this nostalgia for the way New Orleans "used to be" is in my opinion BS. It wasn't a great place to live for a vast majority of people. Most people who had the means to leave did. When you get held up on your front porch, get your house broken into, hear gunshots in the middle of the night regularly, you start to think pretty quickly about what else is out there.

That said, there is a beautiful part of the culture that is at stake that comes with economic development but the fact is that every major urban city will breed liberals and people who appreciate diversity (every city over 500,000 in pop voted blue last election) so with time as new orleans repopulates it's bound to recapture some of the spirit it once had. i hope. republicans can try to make a few bucks off it but in the end a city belongs to the people, it's a liberal concept from the beginning, this idea of mutualism. it will obviously be harder on the poor at first but with time i hope the new construction jobs and new industry will provide opportunity to those that never experienced any in the old New Orleans. but maybe i'm being overly optimistic. that's enough rambling

[readmoreoften]

27. I ain't visitin' no whitie, shopping mall New Orleans

...with sorority girls paid by tourist companies to tap dance with bottle caps on their designer sneakers to 'keep a tradition alive'

...with 'authentic reproductions' of New Orleans architecture

...with the new renovated 9th Ward casino/hotel/shopping multiplex complete with Starbucks and Auntie Annie's pretzels.

[TahitiNut]

28. New Oil Liens

'Nuf said.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

30. Old New Orleans was an organic outgrowth of a unique mixture of

climate, geography, history, and ethnicity. It was one of the few cities in the country that really looked different from anywhere else, and that can't be duplicated artificially.