RACISM Orleans
Out of context: Reply #178
- Started
- Last post
- 186 Responses
- PolaroidMan0
i usually remain silent in these types of discussions because they are pointless for the most part. Everyone is just trying to make THEIR respective points with closed ears to the points of others. I am a new orleans native, but have been living away from the city for the past 8/9 years. My mom and my entire family were affected by the hurricane, most of them lost their homes and most of them have lost their jobs. anyway... none of my family lived in the 9th ward. They lived in the new orleans East (if any of you are familiar with that area) and the rest of them live Uptown (3rd ward, 17th ward etc..). While i agree, with whoever said that its a matter of doing what can and cant be done in terms of destroying the 9th ward and rebuilding uptown, i also have to humbly submit that when i went back with my mom sis and grandmother a week before christmas to assess the damage...in the "nice" areas like St. Charles Ave and the Carrolton area, it appeared that everything was back to normal...but if you go a few blocks over in each of these areas..(where there are nice homes, but predominately black neighborhoods) the electricity would still be off for blocks and the trash was still heaped in the streets. Now my little sister went to Ursuline academy which is a predominateley white school, with a few minorites there. She has been in touch with her white friends as well as her black friends and one arab family that she knows. Most of the students are back in new orleans living in their homes and ready for the school to reopen sometime this month, and the students whose families have not been able to return are mainly the black families. Now, these black families werent poor families living off of welfare and in public housing....they are the middle class blacks and some a little below middle, but a bit above the poverty line, who had decent jobs, nice homes etc. They are being told that the areas they lived in are not ready to be returned to yet. (not 9th ward and so on). The even not so damaged areas are still being worked on in a discriminative way. Now i know kOna or jazX might jump down my throat with the "im sick of the race card rhetoric" stick, but all here who KNOW new orleans, and whose experience there is more than a weekend on burbon street that was restricted to a streetcar ride, the french quarter and a stroll up canal, or magazine streets, will bear witness that there is a HUGE racial divide there and that katrina just exposed a lot of what has been present there since before i was born. Now on the other hand...yes, there was a large element of black people living on welfare and in public housing and so on. i dont run from that fact. I believe that this is an oppurtunity for them(us) to start fresh with a clean slate and change the quality of their/our lives for the better.
sorry for the lenghty post guys.