Year ahead is whiter and smaller for New Orleans

[Thom Little]

"What has caused civilisations to wane or to crumble ... is mostly because they had traumatic climatic changes like hurricanes and earthquakes," said Professor Terrence Fitzmorris of Tulane University. "I'm not sure that the city will come back as it was."

Smaller is one thing, but what about whiter as well? It was the US Secretary of Housing, Alphonso Jackson, who said it first back in September. "New Orleans is not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again."

All these weeks later, no one disagrees. The old demography - two-thirds black to one third white - may be more or less reversed but it is a future that has many in the black community fuming, even murmuring of a Republican conspiracy. The storm, in some people's minds, too conveniently drove the blacks, most of them poor, out of town.

.......

What happens to New Orleans - whether it becomes a virtual museum city or returns to its roots as a cradle of black culture - depends, in the final analysis, on all those individuals and families who fled. If they do not return in significant numbers, the city's tax rolls, its workforce and therefore its whole economy will be changed for good. If they do, it could perhaps be reborn almost as it was.


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article336089.ece

[MercutioATC]

1. I'm not disputing the premise...NOLA will be whiter now.

I have some doubt about the supposed intent behind it, however.

In NOLA, as in most places in the U.S., two things were generally true:

1) Minorities made up a larger percentage of the economically disadvantaged than whites, and

2) The economically disadvantaged occupied the least desirable land.

In NOLA, the "least desirable land" was that which was most prone to flooding.

That's just economic fact...the wealthy get the good land because its desirability increases its value and they're the ones who can pay for it. I don't have a philosophical problem with that (although I do see a couple of ways to level the playing field a bit). It doesn't take a "Republican conspiracy" to "drive the blacks" out of town when the land they occupy is under water...nature does it.