When I was growing up, I used to look forward to piling in the family’s car at four a.m. and heading south to Mississippi and Louisiana. I looked forward to seeing my cousins, my grandparents’ farm and eating the incredible food. We’d stop in Mississippi first and then head to New Orleans where this army brat was treated to the scenes of a real city.
New Orleans was the first place I’d ever been to that seemed to be filled with nothing but colored folk. I mean the gas station, the neighbors, grocery stores, even churches were all filled with various shades of black people. Of course, that was not the reality, but where my people lived it most certainly was. Everything about New Orleans was so new and so vibrant to me. It was a colorful city with more life in one block than most cities have in their entire population.
Last week, I had to shake my head when New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin told an MLK audience that “New Orleans would be a chocolate city again because that’s the way God wants it.” It seems that Mayor Nagin did the same thing that Senator Hillary Clinton did when she compared the White House to a plantation and that is to patronize a black audience.
You see when it comes to public speaking, the experts suggest speakers should know their intended audience so that their words will connect with them. Unfortunately some believe they know black people. And perhaps worse, even some black people think they know black people, but apparently they don’t.
I don’t want to belittle the Mayor too much because I understand his concerns. Many a community’s poor neighborhoods have been allowed to decay, but not before wealthy developers swooped in and constructed a new neighborhood complete with enough fresh sod, hardwood floors and granite countertops for the $300,000 asking price. Mayor Nagin is right to worry that the poor black people now living around the country on borrowed time and in borrowed spaces may not be able to return to a remodeled New Orleans that is more ivory, beige and upper middle class than black, brown and poor.
My aunt and uncle are still living in Pennsylvania near their son while several cousins are camped out with family in Detroit where they’ve had to adjust to the cold. Most of them didn’t even own a coat. They’ve left behind their homes, churches, neighbors, gardens, schools and jobs. The majority of them want to return, but not because New Orleans was once a chocolate city. They want to return because New Orleans was home. Make that happen Mayor Nagin and that will surely be the answer to what God wants.