What makes New Orleans different from any other city in the United States? We’ve mentioned music, food, a mixed bag of culture and heritage, poverty and wealth side by side, and an overall easygoing way of life which treads a very fine line between relaxed and apathetic. However, in the last week, on listening to objections to Nagin’s speech from various corners of the globe, I realize that New Orleans and its surrounding parishes are different in that religion is a way of life down here. It’s so in the blood of this nook of the south that we take it for granted, even if the Big Easy houses more churches than bars.
Almost everyone I have spoken with regarding the chocolate-God fiasco doesn’t mind the chocolate comment, it’s his “talking to God” that doesn’t sit well with them. How dare Nagin invoke a wrathful God who taught New Orleans a lesson; won’t the rest of the nation lump him (and our city) in with crazies like Pat Robertson?
As a friend loves to point out, “Le contexte est plus fort que le concept.” The context is stronger than the concept. Nagin was talking to a largely black, God-fearing and older group of devastated New Orleanians on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. He wanted to inspire his people and dispel their myths, not scare them even more than they already are. If he were to come before this group and talk about science and socioeconomics, his audience would have gone away only with the assurance that the city was trying to kick them out.
By using the local vernacular and by invoking a god in whom they have unwavering faith, his goal was to ensure non-whitification and to point out the deficiencies of a large part of the black community, in their ecclesiastical language: “We’re not taking care of ourselves. We’re not taking care of our women. And we’re not taking care of our children when you have a community where 70 percent of its children are being born to one parent.”
[Why did no one stand up and applaud this part of his speech? Only there to take him down, huh?]
Instead, if Nagin had said, “Well, you see, given the level to which large portions of our parish are below sea level and our part of the country is susceptible to economic instability and hurricanes, we cannot definitively assess the business impact of repopulating a city to its previous proportion with the assurance of housing and jobs.” No, that would not have gone far. And would not have given his audience a lot to think about in terms of personal responsibility. From his flourish-addled speech, it seems to me that Nagin does not want to rebuild solely for the pre-K populace but for a racially-mixed and more aware set of people, be they black or white.
To New Orleans, I say this: What are you trying to rebuild? If you want that big town, with its diverse social characteristics, you cannot forget and underestimate its revivalist roots and branches. To you, the mayor should not use words that “offend,” yet this is the lingo of a large part of the city. You can’t have it both ways. Old-time culture and progress can co-exist, but only when its practitioners, in this case New Orleanians, understand the myriad different contexts that make up our strange city and absorb the concepts accordingly. There is no linear solution for New Orleans.
To everyone else, I say this: The object of this post is not to excuse Nagin’s words. All I ask is that America and the world, again, appreciate the context in which any concept is utilized. I just cannot believe that most would summarily conflate Nagin’s God references with those of fundamentalist loonies.
In reaching out to his people with the realities and responsibilities that face them, Nagin swallowed his foot in the eyes of the rest of America. Worse, he shot himself in the other by apologizing for his speech, because he didn’t want his city to suffer a public relations nightmare.
What’s done is done.
Can we go back to rebuilding now? I’m glad to see that nola.com has reached beyond this drama with only a single mention of it on the front page. There is a lesson to be learned from all of this: even heart-shredding and brain-wracking disasters cannot cure the human ability to misprioritize.
Agreed on nola.com, but the Times-Picayune is all in the frey. The cholcoate fleur de lis in the living section? Feh.
Yeah, my pinko pals are all aghast that Nagin invokes the wrath of God, equating him with Robertson. Displaying, once again, that moral equivlence, lack of perspective, is now an improv art form for the left.
I came back to this city because Nagin asked. Yeah, no, really. It was a trigger. My out. When someone A2 asked my why I’d want to go back, I’d look them in the eye and say, the Mayor wants me back. It was my conversation stopper.
In the ‘chocolate’ speach, I think he was trying to tell the many displaced black citizens, that the rumors are false, that they are needed, we need them back too.
But the steel barricades on the public housing units tell a different story. (No, not that all black families live in public housing, but that’s a strong message. The message is reaching far and wide.)
What is it going to take to repatriate all New Orleanians?
I’m couch surfing Uptown. I’ve found office space, work, new friends. I’ve been the recepient of all sorts of hospitality since my arrival.
Would it be so if I were a black man?
Money, jobs, schools and the wherewithal is what it’s going to take to repatriate all of New Orleans.
Again, my post should not be construed to read that everyone ought to be repatriated for the hell of it. This hurricane gave a lot of people a path out of New Orleans, the ones who were stuck in those projects, a lot of which should be firebombed given their awful conditions. Also, it would be easier for folks to move back into public housing as a way of life. New Orleans cannot afford to have people go back to their pre-Katrina lives in that sense.
Like people of any color, I support those black individuals, families and homeowners in New Orleans East, Mid City, Gentilly and the Lower Ninth who provided towards the New Orleans economy and want to come back to make a difference. Then again, if the city can’t do anything for them and the economics of the situation disfavor them, they should look for better lives and jobs elsewhere, at the expense of living amongst their heritage. Two out of three ain’t bad after going through a disaster.
Some people might have found a better life outside if New Orleans. They may be a fair number of people who invested in their evacuation city, and perfer to stay there. It’s hard to find a place in America that has school system with more problems that New Orleans, as an example.
good, thoughtful post. beyond that … no comment, time to move on and get all that work done.