January 17, 2006
Please, someone tell me this is a fake . . .
Mayor Ray Nagin talks about New Orleans being "chocolate at the end of the day".
It's a joke, right? Right? Or taken completely out of context, yes?
Hat tip to James Lileks.
Update: Jon sent me a link to an older Andrew Sullivan article which touches on the use of "chocolate" as a code for "segregated".
Update the second: See the first link in this post for more.
Posted by Nicholas at January 17, 2006 10:19 AM
I don't think Ray Nagin is a racist, he's just a dumb ass.
Nagin will say what it takes to please the croud in front of him. He is a racist and a dumb ass. He needs to step down and let someone else put this shit hole city in a better direction. As we all will watch New Orleans fail again if Nagin has anything to do w/ it.
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I've been to New Orleans twice, the most recent visit being March, 2005. My sense was that the place had become less governable in the brief interval between my two visits (three years), and that the residents and visitors were less safe than they had been only a few years earlier.
That's part of why I've been so fascinated with the part that Mayor Nagin has been playing: he was elected (so I've been told) as a reformer, to clean up and set right all the failings of the city's previous administrations. What I've seen him say and do has made me wonder just how bad the earlier mayors had been.
Yes, he's the mayor of a ghost city right now, and it's not fair to compare his performance to that of mayors who were elected in more "normal" years. That being said, the man clearly is playing to a very different audience than his actual constituents (at least based on the media appearances that waft this far north), and it would be hard to say that he's been performing well as the absentee mayor.
i lived in the new orleans metro area most of my life and i am not shocked that nagin said something stupid AGAIN this is not the first time he has done something stupid nagin was a bad mayor even before the storm do people think that will change now
Nagin is pandering to anyone who'll listen to him speak. He should realize his time is short.
Iam a evacuee from New Orleans and I am white. I voted for this moron. Now if nagin wants the city to be majority "chocolate" its gonna go back to being the city with a very high murder rate and and being a city where half its population is on welfare and dont want to work. Look how these people are acting in other states that are trying to help them. They just want a free hand out,thats why they have not returned because there are too many jobs available.
Im also an evacuee from new orleans and white..I think nagins quote seriously got taken out of context...new orleans was already a chocolate city pre-katrina...everyone thinks he means he wants an all african american new orleans when all he means is he wants the african americans to come back...I went back to new orleans a few weeks ago and seriously the majority of the city was now white which is unusual for new orleans since its always been dominated by african americans. New orleans is not going to be the same until all the residents come back and i believe thats what he meant!
