"chocolate New Orleans"

Thus spake God Almighty, if one is to believe Ray (I never make mistakes) Nagin. As in, to provide the full context (from today’s WaPo):

It’s time for us to rebuild New Orleans — the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans,” the mayor said. “This city will be a majority-African American city. It’s the way God wants it to be. You can’t have New Orleans no other way. It wouldn’t be New Orleans.”

Nope. Can’t have it “no other way.” Nagin is the current mayor of Nawlins, to give it the annoying Texan pronunciation that used to provide NOLA natives yet another reason to feel superior. Or at least this is the way it was when I lived in New Orleans for a time, when we were instructed to give it the French pronunciation, Nooo Or-Lee-Ahns. More or less.

I haven’t check my latest e-mails from God, but my sense is that He doesn’t really care if NOLA is a majority black, yellow, white, or purple city. In fact, the last time the Big Guy checked in with me, He pretty much told me that anyone who takes His name in the service of racism isn’t really doing His will.

One of the perhaps less-well-known facts about New Orleans is that it was one of the largest slave ports in the Americas, a mega-mart for buying and selling people. Was this, too, “the way God wants it to be?” If not, He surely took His sweet time correcting the situation.

And, not to put too fine a point on it, but to claim that God mandates that New Orleans, or any other place, be “chocolate” is, at the very least, racist. If not plain stupid. Ray Nagin, of course, isn’t Pat Robertson, and his idiotarian remarks won’t get the same play in the media. Pity, because they’re just as shameful.

Which kind of also says something about the pass that idiots can get in the MSM if they’re the right color or ethnic group. Once a victim, always a victim, eh Ray? The serious point is that if blacks consider themselves to be permament members of a class of victims, then they are doomed to the pitiful dependancy that leads to cesspools like NOLA’s Ninth Ward. And to whining idiotarians like Ray Nagin to “lead” them.

We can do much better. New Orleans deserves much better. And let’s not claim that “God is on our side” when we rebuild. God’s on everyone’s side. Even Ray Nagin’s. Just that my sense is that God gives us the tools, but then leaves us alone to do the job…or fail.

Both options are open.