[extropy-chat] Manhattan vs. New Orleans

[Damien Broderick]

At 12:53 AM 9/2/2005 -0400, David L wrote:

>(3) What explains the differences between these two portrayed responses? 
>The causes of the events? The composition of the populace?

Here's a perhaps unexpected reply, from novelist Anne Rice (perhaps it will 
be dismissed as romanticism):

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/opinion/04rice.html?ei=5090&en=ce2f33f8719dba9c&ex=1283486400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print


September 4, 2005
Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans? By ANNE RICE
La Jolla, Calif.
WHAT do people really know about New Orleans? Do they take away with
them an awareness that it has always been not only a great white
metropolis but also a great black city, a city where African-Americans
have come together again and again to form the strongest
African-American culture in the land? The first literary magazine ever
published in Louisiana was the work of black men, French-speaking poets
and writers who brought together their work in three issues of a little
book called L'Album Littéraire. That was in the 1840's, and by that
time the city had a prosperous class of free black artisans, sculptors,
businessmen, property owners, skilled laborers in all fields. Thousands
of slaves lived on their own in the city, too, making a living at
various jobs, and sending home a few dollars to their owners in the
country at the end of the month. This is not to diminish the horror of
the slave market in the middle of the famous St. Louis Hotel, or the
injustice of the slave labor on plantations from one end of the state to
the other. It is merely to say that it was never all "have or have not"
in this strange and beautiful city.
Later in the 19th century, as the Irish immigrants poured in by the
thousands, filling the holds of ships that had emptied their cargoes of
cotton in Liverpool, and as the German and Italian immigrants soon
followed, a vital and complex culture emerged. Huge churches went up to
serve the great faith of the city's European-born Catholics; convents
and schools and orphanages were built for the newly arrived and the
struggling; the city expanded in all directions with new neighborhoods
of large, graceful houses, or areas of more humble cottages, even the
smallest of which, with their floor-length shutters and deep-pitched
roofs, possessed an undeniable Caribbean charm. Through this all, black
culture never declined in Louisiana. In fact, New Orleans became home to
blacks in a way, perhaps, that few other American cities have ever been.
Dillard University and Xavier University became two of the most
outstanding black colleges in America; and once the battles of
desegregation had been won, black New Orleanians entered all levels of
life, building a visible middle class that is absent in far too many
Western and Northern American cities to this day. The influence of
blacks on the music of the city and the nation is too immense and too
well known to be described. It was black musicians coming down to New
Orleans for work who nicknamed the city "the Big Easy" because it was a
place where they could always find a job. But it's not fair to the
nature of New Orleans to think of jazz and the blues as the poor man's
music, or the music of the oppressed. Something else was going on in New
Orleans. The living was good there. The clock ticked more slowly; people
laughed more easily; people kissed; people loved; there was joy.
Which is why so many New Orleanians, black and white, never went north.
They didn't want to leave a place where they felt at home in
neighborhoods that dated back centuries; they didn't want to leave
families whose rounds of weddings, births and funerals had become the
fabric of their lives. They didn't want to leave a city where tolerance
had always been able to outweigh prejudice, where patience had always
been able to outweigh rage. They didn't want to leave a place that was
theirs.
And so New Orleans prospered, slowly, unevenly, but surely - home to
Protestants and Catholics, including the Irish parading through the old
neighborhood on St. Patrick's Day as they hand out cabbages and potatoes
and onions to the eager crowds; including the Italians, with their
lavish St. Joseph's altars spread out with cakes and cookies in homes
and restaurants and churches every March; including the uptown
traditionalists who seek to preserve the peace and beauty of the Garden
District; including the Germans with their clubs and traditions;
including the black population playing an ever increasing role in the
city's civic affairs.
Now nature has done what the Civil War couldn't do. Nature has done what
the labor riots of the 1920's couldn't do. Nature had done what "modern
life" with its relentless pursuit of efficiency couldn't do. It has done
what racism couldn't do, and what segregation couldn't do either. Nature
has laid the city waste - with a scope that brings to mind the end of
Pompeii.
•
I share this history for a reason - and to answer questions that have
arisen these last few days. Almost as soon as the cameras began panning
over the rooftops, and the helicopters began chopping free those trapped
in their attics, a chorus of voices rose. "Why didn't they leave?"
people asked both on and off camera. "Why did they stay there when they
knew a storm was coming?" One reporter even asked me, "Why do people
live in such a place?"
Then as conditions became unbearable, the looters took to the streets.
Windows were smashed, jewelry snatched, stores broken open, water and
food and televisions carried out by fierce and uninhibited crowds. Now
the voices grew even louder. How could these thieves loot and pillage in
a time of such crisis? How could people shoot one another? Because the
faces of those drowning and the faces of those looting were largely
black faces, race came into the picture. What kind of people are these,
the people of New Orleans, who stay in a city about to be flooded, and
then turn on one another?
Well, here's an answer. Thousands didn't leave New Orleans because they
couldn't leave. They didn't have the money. They didn't have the
vehicles. They didn't have any place to go. They are the poor, black and
white, who dwell in any city in great numbers; and they did what they
felt they could do - they huddled together in the strongest houses they
could find. There was no way to up and leave and check into the nearest
Ramada Inn.
What's more, thousands more who could have left stayed behind to help
others. They went out in the helicopters and pulled the survivors off
rooftops; they went through the flooded streets in their boats trying to
gather those they could find. Meanwhile, city officials tried
desperately to alleviate the worsening conditions in the Superdome,
while makeshift shelters and hotels and hospitals struggled. And where
was everyone else during all this? Oh, help is coming, New Orleans was
told. We are a rich country. Congress is acting. Someone will come to
stop the looting and care for the refugees. And it's true: eventually,
help did come. But how many times did Gov. Kathleen Blanco have to say
that the situation was desperate? How many times did Mayor Ray Nagin
have to call for aid? Why did America ask a city cherished by millions
and excoriated by some, but ignored by no one, to fight for its own life
for so long? That's my question. I know that New Orleans will win its
fight in the end. I was born in the city and lived there for many years.
It shaped who and what I am. Never have I experienced a place where
people knew more about love, about family, about loyalty and about
getting along than the people of New Orleans. It is perhaps their very
gentleness that gives them their endurance.
They will rebuild as they have after storms of the past; and they will
stay in New Orleans because it is where they have always lived, where
their mothers and their fathers lived, where their churches were built
by their ancestors, where their family graves carry names that go back
200 years. They will stay in New Orleans where they can enjoy a
sweetness of family life that other communities lost long ago. But to my
country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked
down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our
Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music.
Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority
preying on the weak among us, you called us "Sin City," and turned your
backs.
Well, we are a lot more than all that. And though we may seem the most
exotic, the most atmospheric and, at times, the most downtrodden part of
this land, we are still part of it. We are Americans. We are you.