Whitening New Orleans
The Black Commentator has the story:
Mayor Ray Nagin’s commission has presented residents of flood-battered, mostly African American neighborhoods with a Catch-22, carefully crafted to preclude New Orleans from ever again becoming the more than two-thirds Black city it was before Hurricane Katrina breached the levees. Authored by Nagin crony, real estate development mogul and George Bush fundraiser Joseph Canizaro, the plan would impose a four-month moratorium on building in devastated neighborhoods like the lower Ninth Ward and New Orleans East. During that period, the neighborhoods would be required to come up with a plan to show how they would become “viable” by reaching an undefined “critical mass” of residents.
But the moratorium, itself, discourages people from rebuilding their neighborhoods – just as it is intended to do – thus creating a fait accompli: residents will be hard pressed to prove that a “critical mass” of habitation can be achieved.