Nagin calls for rebuilding of 'chocolate' New Orleans

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin yesterday called for the rebuilding of a "chocolate New Orleans" that maintains the city's black majority, saying, "You can't have New Orleans no other way."

"I don't care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day," Nagin said in a Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech. "This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be."

Uptown is a reference to a mostly white part of the city.

Pressed later to explain his comments, Nagin, who is black, told reporters that he was referring to creation of a racially diverse city in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, insisting that his remarks were not divisive.

"How do you make chocolate? You take dark chocolate, you mix it with white milk, and it becomes a delicious drink. That is the chocolate I am talking about," he said. "New Orleans was a chocolate city before Katrina. It is going to be a chocolate city after. How is that divisive? It is white and black working together, coming together and making something special."

Before Hurricane Katrina slammed New Orleans with floods in August, forcing a mass evacuation and abandonning of the Big Easy, about two-thirds of New Orleans' population was black.

The worst of the Hurricane Katrina flooding was in predominately black areas that still remain largely uninhabitable, while residents in mostly white areas that were less badly damaged have been able to return home -- prompting speculation that the much-smaller city could end up with a white majority if large numbers of black evacuees do not return.

Black residents and political leaders have complained about the slow pace of recovery in mostly black areas compared to mostly white areas such as Uptown and the French Quarter, where services have been restored and life has almost returned to normal.

In his speech, Nagin also said "God is mad at America," in part because he does not approve "of us being in Iraq under false pretenses.", Nagin said, "He is sending hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it is destroying and putting stress on this country!"

He said God is "upset at black America also."

"We are not taking care of ourselves. We are not taking care of our women, and we are not taking care of our children when you have a community where 70 percent of its children are being born to a single parent."

Nagin, who was elected in 2002, was supposed to come up for re-election next month. However, Louisiana officials postponed the city election until April because of Hurricane Katrina.