Journal smartfart's Journal: Chocolate Town
Mayor Ray Nagin told a crowd gathered at City Hall for a Martin Luther King Day march that New Orleans will be "chocolate" again.
"We ask black people... It's time for us to come together. It's time for us to rebuild New Orleans -- the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans," Nagin said Monday. "This city will be a majority African American city. It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no other way. It wouldn't be New Orleans."
The city was more than 60% black before Hurricane Katrina displaced about three-quarters of its population, but spared several predominantly white neighborhoods.
The city wasn't always disproportionately black. It wasn't until the 1970s when many whites fled to Chalmette, coupled with government incentives to poor unwed black mothers which made it economically attractive for them to stay unmarried and continually pregnant, that the city's population began to darken.
Since Nagin claims that God wanted New Orleans to become a "chocolate town", does that mean by extension that God is in favor of white flight? What about the practice of having baby after baby while living off welfare, with no husband in sight? Does God also approve of that? My white bible says that immorality is a sin, and that if a man won't work, he shouldn't be allowed to eat, either. Presumably this last judgement extends to women as well.
What about slavery? Surely the ancestors of the black people in New Orleans didn't swim here from Africa --- does Nagin think that it was God's will that the black man be stolen from his home all those years ago, put on slave ships, and sold on the auction block right here in our unfair city?
I don't believe God intended for any of this to turn out the way it has. The tree has fallen, however, and if we sincerely trust the Lord, He'll help us to cope with where it happens to lie. However, doing so might require us to humble ourselves and act like we love our complimentary-skinned brothers once in a while (I think both bibles say something about this), instead of revealing the divisive, hateful contents of our heart at public rallies.
NOTE: Here's another link to the story.
