RACIAL HYSTERIA

From CNN:

Nagin apologizes for 'chocolate' city comments

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Mayor Ray Nagin on Tuesday apologized for urging residents to rebuild a "chocolate New Orleans" and saying, "You can't have New Orleans no other way."

"I'm really sorry that some people took that they way they did, and that was not my intention," the mayor said. "I say everybody's welcome."

Nagin added that he never should have used the term "chocolate."

Across the Hurricane Katrina-ravaged city, many voiced their displeasure with the mayor's Monday remarks at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech. One Web site even began peddling T-shirts showing Nagin with a top hat along with the caption "Willy Nagin and the Chocolate Factory."

Resident Alex Gerhold called Nagin's remarks "stupid" and "pitiful."

"He used the wrong dairy product to describe us. We're more Neapolitan, not chocolate," Gerhold said. "It doesn't do the city any kind of justice."

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You know, this controversy is just plain nuts. There's nothing offensive about Nagin's use of the term "Chocolate City," a term that has been around for at least twenty five years, used by African-Americans to describe majority black US cities, principally Washington, D.C., especially given the context that there is a well substantiated fear that many people of color may not be able to return to the Big Easy, and may not have homes there if they do. New Orleans' vital cultural heritage is overwhelmingly black and there can be nothing wrong in wanting to maintain that cultural heritage in the post-Katrina era.

But I think this essay below from CounterPunch makes the point much more clearly than I do, as well as offer an explanation of what's really behind the hysteria:

DC, New Orleans and the Phony Outrage Over Ray Nagin

When either ethnic progress or progress in ethnic relations are stymied, arguing over words becomes a substitute. It's the upper class bias towards civility over activity as transferred to the media and politics.

Thus it's not surprising, in the midst of America's second post-reconstruction era, that Howard Dean gets attacked in the white media for saying that he wants the votes of southern whites who drive around in pickups with Confederate flag stickers even though he got applause when he said the same thing to a heavily black audience in the south. It's not surprising that Hillary Clinton is excoriated for using the word 'plantation' in front of black audience even though Newt Gingrich once said the same thing of the House of Representatives and no one said a mumblin' word. And it's not surprising that Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans should get in trouble for aspiring to keep New Orleans - formerly a two-thirds black town - "chocolate" even though he stole the term from DC where it was applied with love and honor for quite a few years.

Click here for the rest.

You know, as far as I can tell, the only people who have a problem with this "Chocolate City" thing are pussified whites. What could possibly be threatening about a desire to keep New Orleans' status as a thriving center of black life and culture? I applaud Mayor Nagin's statement and intent: as a white American who has visited New Orleans many times, I have never felt unwelcome there; indeed, one of the great things about the city is it's "chocolate" status.

For god's sake, doesn't anybody remember that jazz was born there? That the blues has a strong presence there? That incredible Creole food has been prepared there for nearly two hundred years by people of color? That countless fantastic and wonderful stories come out of the city's black neighborhoods? That there are all these weird and cool African-American people hanging out on the streets?

Fuck these "We Are the World," p.c., bullshit, crocodile tears.

The only mistake Nagin made was in saying that God wants the Crescent City to be majority black--how could he possibly know that? But I'm willing to cut the man some slack. Becky says to chalk it up to post-traumatic stress disorder, which is currently a very real phenomenon in the Big Easy. He's been through a lot, so I'm personally willing to forgive some kooky talk about "God's will." But then, it seems that disgruntled whites are waaay more concerned with the "Chocolate City" remark, anyway.

Man, what's really amazing is that I'm still amazed by how stupid some people are.

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